The Matrix Has You

JMR vs. Newsweek

2008-12-17T10:48:00.001-08:00

I don't know if anyone reads this blog anymore, but I wanted to share two articles with you, if you're still out there. The first is an article Newsweek ran last week, entitled "Our Mutual Joy," that argued that the Bible supports gay marriage:

"Our Mutual Joy"

I was so frustrated as I read the article because of how grossly the authors misunderstood and twisted Scripture. I was close to commenting on the article, but decided not to because there was just too much to respond to. And (interestingly enough) the article received so many comments from both sides that they actually had to disable comments for a while because the volume was too large.

Fortunately for me, Dr. John Mark Reynolds, a professor in the Biola Torrey Honors Institute and a brilliant writer, has written a terrific response to the article. I would highly suggest it to all my readers:

"An Obvious Truth: The Bible Supports Traditional Marriage

As always, JMR's essay is brilliant and clearly shows up the false assumptions and claims of the Newsweek article while also touching on principles of biblical interpretation and even how to read old books in general. JMR vs. Newsweek: JMR wins with a knock-out in the first round!

Bathroom Vandals At Work

2008-08-14T15:16:00.000-07:00

Men's bathroom sign:

Women's bathroom sign:

My caption: "You... complete me."

An Awesome Video

2008-08-04T20:39:00.001-07:00

I know I've been posting a lot of stuff of other people's lately, and not so much stuff from my life, but this is too good to resist. (And hey, maybe you, my few but faithful readers, enjoy that more anyway.) This is an awesome video. Watch the subtitles. And if Eleanor and/or Mrs. C still read this blog, we'll have to get their input regarding Louisiana and Texas.

(Credit: I saw this on a blog I read, from a blogger who has [with this post] returned from a long blogging absence: Imprimis.)

The Word Origin Calendar Strikes Again

2008-07-29T19:55:00.000-07:00

For Christmas this past year, my mom got me a desktop calendar called "The Word Origin Calendar." Every day it provides me with the origin of a word or a phrase, and it's been very interesting thus far. This one was of particular interest, as I'd never heard it before, and I thought y'all (all, what, three of my readers) might be interested as well.

"okay, O.K. • Efforts have been made to trace this term to an African original, okeh, but this all-American term comes from President Martin Van Buren, who served from 1837 to 1841. He approved documents with the initials 'O.K.,' which stood for his nickname, Old Kinderhook, after the New York town where he was born."

Fascinating! I'll have to keep this in mind for the next useless fact competition that comes up at work....

An Awesome Comic I Just Had To Share

2008-07-20T18:39:00.000-07:00

This one's for Courtney. And for what Mark will learn soon.

(Credits: I saw it on the Language Log, and it's originally from xkcd.com.)

Official Music Video for DW's "A Savior On Capital Hill"

2008-07-14T18:31:00.000-07:00

(As seen on derekwebb.net.)

I may not agree with all the points that Derek makes in this song or video, but this is pretty clever and pretty well done. Worth a watch.

An Awesome John Piper Quote

2008-06-23T19:36:00.000-07:00

A terrific quote by one of my favorite pastors ever:

"The end of it all: the display of the fullness of His glory, magnified in the white-hot worship of a blood-bought people." - John Piper

A Quick Post Before Bedtime

2008-06-10T22:18:00.001-07:00

(Who would have ever thought that my bedtime would be 10:30 pm? If you'd told me that while I was in college, where I regularly stayed up--most nights--until 1 or 2 am, I'd have laughed.)

Work is going really well. I'm enjoying it a lot more than I thought I was going to; it really does appeal to the J aspects of my personality. I'm running reports, creating and closing purchase orders and invoices, updating databases. It may not sound exciting, but it's actually a lot of fun for me. And of course I'm having a great time working with Doug. The work environment is "super chill," as Mike would say: no one is afraid to just hang around and chat, some people come over to the front just to harass Doug, and I hear that "the guys" go to an Irish pub to hang out about once a week. I'm looking forward to the first time I'm invited to that.

(I added the "The place I work" link back to the "Random Stuff About Me" box in the sidebar. It's so exciting to have a workplace again.)

I'm settling into my apartment quite well too. I still have some things to unpack (lots'n'lots o' books) and things to put away, and lots of things to hang on the walls that I don't have enough wall space for, but in general I'm feeling much more at home. And the apartment has been working out very well--it's a great place. Mike and I are still planning on having an apartment-warming party once we get all our furniture, so stay tuned for that information.

And last but not least, The Listening Blog is also doing quite well. I've been getting more comments than I expected, although I'm always open for more. Some upcoming posts will include my favorite film production company video logo (the blog's worth checking out just for that), a review of the soundtrack to the movie Juno, and an interesting discussion of some extramusical sounds, complete with musical examples both visual and aural. Come check it out and tell me what you think!

Help Mike Win!

2008-06-03T20:38:00.000-07:00

Those who know my great friend and now roommate, Mike Morabito, know how much he likes to win. Now you can help him achieve this worthy goal. He's entered an SEO (Search Engine Optimization) essay contest, and he wants your comments and feedback and props on his article, which is well written and very interesting, even though it's about marketing. I don't know about you, marketing doesn't interest me much in general; but Mike's article had me hooked. And not just because I'm biased. So read his blog post, follow one of the five links in his blog post to the article, read it, and comment at the bottom, today, like right now, go!

www.moreburritos.com

The Listening Blog Lives!

2008-05-26T14:31:00.001-07:00

Yes, it's true--my latest project, a new blog, is officially being launched today!

The Listening Blog (www.thelisteningblog.com)

I created this blog basically to force myself to listen more closely to the world around me, and to force myself to analyze what I hear and write about it. As a composer, listening to me is as essential as reading to a writer, and I feel that I don't listen analytically nearly as much as I should. So I'll be posting on this blog hopefully four to seven times a week, generally short posts, about a wide variety of topics: music I'm listening to on CDs or my iPod, movie scores, classical music, pop music, interesting non-musical sounds, composition projects I'm working on, etc. Some upcoming posts will include the musical end of the TV show Alias, two film soundtrack reviews (including musical examples), and comments on songs by Aaron Copland and Dave Matthews. Although it may become technical at times, I feel like anyone who's interested in music of any kind will find it entertaining and/or enlightening. So head on over, check it out, and leave me a comment so I know you're "listening"!

... And Then He Was Gainfully Employed!

2008-05-13T12:25:00.000-07:00

Greetings readers:
I am proud and thrilled to announce that after four months of job searching, I am finally employed! I received my informal offer over the phone and then through email, and I'm just waiting for the formal letter from HR. The company is Rauxa Direct (www.rauxa.com), in Costa Mesa, and I'll be working with my good friend (and old roommate) Doug Pierson. It's not a music job, but I'm content and I'm excited about it--and of course I'll continue to compose rocking music on the side.

Four months of job searching, and then five weeks after first sending in my application to Rauxa. Mike tells me that four months is pretty typical for today's job searcher; it seemed interminable to me. But now it's all over. He and I will be looking for an apartment in the Irvine/Tustin/Santa Ana area soon, so if you know of anything hit me up.

And in the meantime--Claim Jumper tonight with the fam to celebrate!

Wine Pairs Well With Chocolate; Or, Another Short Story For You To Read

2008-05-07T15:07:00.000-07:00

(My first short story, from July 2006, is posted here.)

Several weeks ago, Mom, Dad, Mark and I were walking out of a Chili's where we'd just eaten dinner, when we noticed a Rocky Mountain Chocolate Factory across the street that had just opened. Eleanor was coming down to visit in a few days, and Mom suggested I take her there before going home to drink some wine Mom had purchased for the occasion--"that could be a prelude to wine," she said. My reply was, " 'A Prelude To Wine'... that would be a great title for a movie, or a short story!" I've always been skeptical of prophecy, but apparently that was a prophetic line (albeit a self-fulfilling one). Mark was inspired to change his high school senior project film to fit that premise, although he retitled it In Vino Veritas (it's brilliant, by the way); and I was inspired to write a short story. As with the last one, read it (twice) and comment. And as with the last one, be warned that it's pretty intense. Here it be:

≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈

A Prelude To Wine
Thursday evening, 5:55 pm
The flame leaped in a sudden flash of light as the candle was lit. Lydia blew out the match, looked at the settings on the table. Two plates, forks, knives, napkins, glasses.... She reached down to straighten one of the forks, and saw the quick glint of light on her golden wedding ring. She smiled. All was nearly ready. She went to the kitchen and retrieved a bottle of red wine, uncorked it, came back to the dining room and poured the dark crimson liquid into each glass. The doorbell rang, and she replaced the wine bottle in the kitchen and went to open the door. There was a loud crack and another bright flash; Lydia crumpled silently to the floor. The killer dropped the gun, and slowly moved toward the table.

Thursday afternoon, 2:37 pm
A bump on the track and the subway’s loud horn shook Howard from his trance. The icy feeling that had gripped him all day had pushed him under again. He felt a fresh wave of shock as he thought back to his discovery of the morning.

He had accessed his wife’s email account on their home computer before leaving for work; he couldn’t remember why. Checking an automated bank statement, or something. He’d noticed an email with a suspicious subject line from an address he didn’t recognize, and opened it to find that his wife had been cheating on him. For quite a while, as it seemed. And not only was she having sex with this man – the email disclosed that she was confiding in him, confessing some fears she’d been having lately about the security of her job and the health of her mother. Things she hadn’t even mentioned to Howard. He felt a pain in his stomach thinking about it; but it gave way to cold as he thought again of how she had told this man, and not Howard. And as he had left the house for work, stunned into silence, his wife had had the audacity to kiss him goodbye! Lydia’s kiss goodbye was more sincere!

He couldn’t focus at work, he was too distracted. After his lunch break, he logged into her email account again from his work computer and discovered another message, this time from his wife to the man – she called him “darling,” a term she never used with Howard! – making plans for an afternoon rendezvous at their house. Rage boiled inside of him, but he tried to suppress it and return to his work. After innumerable nervous trips to the water cooler, he made excuses to his boss that he felt ill and caught the early subway back, determined to accost his wife and her lover in their tryst.

He looked out the window into the dark tunnel ahead, seeing the faint pinprick of another train’s headlight coming toward him on the opposite side of the track. The subway ride was a long one and it gave him much time to think. A pang of the love he knew for his wife overwhelmed him, but it was soon hardened. She was having an affair! A faint whisper of his conscience reminded him of his ongoing liaison with Lydia. But that was different, that was just a little sex on the side; his wife hadn’t been physically affectionate with him for a long time. And besides, the last time he’d been with Lydia they had quarreled, so that might be over anyway. But his wife! Confiding in that man! And for so long! He shivered, and as he felt the cold he slipped again into an unfeeling stupor.

Thursday afternoon, 4:43 pm
At the end of the block, Howard parked his car and killed the engine. His drive back from the subway station had been a silent one, and now his movements were cool and calculated. He wanted no advance notice of his arrival. He walked the block, went noiselessly up to his own front door, and slowly opened it and entered. A noise startled him, but he realized it was the TV in the living room. As he moved past it, he briefly and unthinkingly noted the televangelist speaking from a plexiglass pulpit. He was reading from a thick Bible: “...our daily bread, and forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors. And lead us not into temptation, but deli....” Howard paused, and heard muffled sounds coming from the bedroom upstairs. He silently opened a closet door. Feeling around on the top shelf, he lifted some sheets and retrieved a handgun.

As he slowly climbed the stairs, avoiding the one that always creaked, he checked and verified that the gun was fully loaded. A left turn at the top of the staircase revealed that the bedroom door was closed, but he could now clearly make out his wife’s voice. He opened the door, saw the couple in bed and calmly fired two bullets into each of them. Crossing to the far side of the room, he crouched down beside his wife. She looked scared and confused, but saw him staring unmoved and unfeeling back at her. He noted that she was slipping away quickly. As her eyes glazed over and began to close, she whispered one word. “Lydia....”

He started. She knew about Lydia! How? How could she know? He’d never been stupid enough to email Lydia the way his wife had done.

Howard slowly stood up and moved back to the other side of the room to look at his wife’s lover. Another shock – it was Lydia’s husband! He knew him from Lydia’s pictures and a chance meeting the couples had had once at a social event. Now he would have to kill Lydia too. He felt no regrets for killing the man, but since Howard and Lydia’s quarrel last time she would probably want to make up with her husband. Forgive as forgiven, or something like that. Glancing out the window, he put up his hand to block the setting sun from his eyes. He turned away from the bedroom, walked downstairs and returned to his car.

Thursday evening, 5:56 pm
Lydia reached down to straighten one of the forks, and saw the quick glint of light on her golden wedding ring. She smiled. All was nearly ready for the dinner she had prepared for her husband. She went to the kitchen and retrieved a bottle of red wine, uncorked it, came back to the dining room and poured the dark crimson liquid into each glass. She then removed a small vial from her pocket and emptied the contents into the wine glass nearest the door. That stinking bastard of a husband of hers was finally going to get what was coming to him. She knew he was cheating on her, but that didn’t matter much. What mattered was Howard. One sip of that red wine, and her husband would be dead, and then she and Howard could be together. She knew he didn’t care much for his wife; if he did, why would he be sleeping with Lydia in the first place? She smiled again and replaced the vial in her pocket. It would be over very soon.

The doorbell rang, and she replaced the wine bottle in the kitchen and went to open the door. “Howard?” she said in surprise. Howard fired a single shot; Lydia crumpled silently to the floor. He dropped the gun, and slowly moved toward the table. He did not even feel the cold now. Noting without thinking the candles and the perfect place settings, he sat down in the chair nearest the door. He lifted the wine glass to his lips, and drank.

The End

AJ's Listening Page, Volume 2

2008-04-27T15:13:00.000-07:00

Here's my listening page #2! Sorry to be a week late--I haven't been listening to as much music as I should be lately. I'll try to do better next time. Oh, and in response to Mark's and Nicole's comments on my last listening page.... Since "inquiring minds want to know," okay, no, there's no way I could narrow my list of favorite songs down to just twenty. I was just trying to make a point. X&Y absolutely rocks. That's all.

In The Car

River of Worship - Live at Harvest 2/22/08 - Jeff Mercer Band
This is the CD that was recorded when we played at the Harvest singles ministry in February. (My blog post about it, in case you missed it, can be found here [under point #3]). I don't listen to this because it's a recording of me--my acoustic guitar plays a relatively minor role, especially in the fun little details I listen to and in my singing along. But I listen to it because it's just a really rockin' CD. Jeff is a great singer, pianist and worship leader, and his passion ignites the performance of all the musicians around him. I'll be listening to this CD for a long time. If you didn't check out the River of Worship Myspace page the last time I posted about it, go here, listen to the songs and leave Jeff a comment: http://www.myspace.com/riverofworshipmusic.

On The iPod

Belshazzar's Feast by William Walton
This is one of my favorite choral pieces of all time. It's an extended (36-minute) piece for mixed choir (guys and girls) and orchestra, with various texts from the Bible dealing with the Jewish exile to Babylon, Belshazzar's feast in which he sees the writing on the wall, and the fall of Babylon. I sang it in my first semester with the University Singers choir at Cal State Fullerton, under the baton of John Alexander (the link is to a Cal State Fullerton faculty info page--he's not at the school anymore but the page is still there), and the better I got to know the piece the more I liked it. It has its big loud sections about the destruction of Babylon, and its hushed a cappella sections: "How can we sing the Lord's song in a strange land?" Walton's word painting is excellent (including some just-not-quite-normal chords on the word "strange" in the aforementioned a cappella passage), and his use of unifying recurring motives is brilliant. There's a fun section in the middle, during the feast, where Belshazzar is saying "Praise ye the god of gold, the god of silver, the god of brass, the god of iron," etc., where the orchestra mirrors what the choir is singing--the "god of silver" is played with a silver xylophone, the "god of brass" gets a brass fanfare, etc. It's a powerful piece that leaves the listener very satisfied at its end. I'd recommend it to anyone, although some of its more adventuresome harmonies may be difficult to swallow for untrained ears. (Hmm... sorry to mix sensory metaphors there....)

Renewing Your Mind by R.C. Sproul - "God Is Love"
Okay, this isn't technically music, but it's what I listened to on my iPod last night. Renewing Your Mind is a daily radio program produced by Ligonier Ministries, the ministry of R.C. Sproul, and they have a daily podcast of the program. R.C. Sproul is a PCA minister (we went to his church when we visited Florida on the road trip), lecturer and author, and has taught classes, seminars, and conferences for way more years than I've been alive, and has written way more books than you can imagine, and he's awesome. Most of the time the Renewing Your Mind broadcasts aren't delivered in an especially dynamic, passion-charged way--because they're really lectures--but his teaching is so direct and clear that it's life-changing anyway, and his passion for teaching God's people about God's character is obvious. The episode I listened to last night was the first in a series entitled "Loved By God," and it was a lecture on 1 John 4:7-11, which contains the famous phrase "God is love." Sproul talked about the magnificence of the love of God, while also cautioning that God's love must be understood in the context of His other attributes, such as justice, sovereignty and holiness. Many people proclaim that God is a God of love to the detriment or even ignorance of His other characteristics, and Sproul did an excellent job of tempering an awesome exposition of God's love with an enlightening discussion of its relationship to His overall character. If you're interested in listening to some of Sproul's talks, go to his ministry's website, www.ligonier.org, and click on "Video" or "Audio" in the media center box. A search for "R.C. Sproul" in the iTunes store will turn up the daily podcast.

That's all for now! Look for an exciting post here in the next couple of days--another story like the story I wrote two years ago. And in the meantime comment!

Hold Please, Your Readership Is Very Important To Me....

2008-04-24T11:46:00.000-07:00

I'm planning to post another Listening Page this Sunday; I'm also waiting to hear about a job possibility; and pending that job I'm waiting to move. Currently circling in a holding pattern.... In the meantime, check these out:

My Literary Ramblings. This is my cousin Nicole's first blog, so head on over, leave her a comment and welcome her into the blogging world.
Jason & Nolan Livesay. These twin brothers, both of whom have been involved in LifeHouse (Nolan wrote all the music for their current show, The Rise of King David), are amazing. They're amazing vocalists, amazing violinists, and amazing composers. If you click on the "Live Music" link on their homepage, and then click "albums / media" (or, as a shortcut, if you just click here) you can watch some incredible videos of their violin performances, especially the "Best of JASON & NOLAN live!" and "Devil Went Down to Georgia." Your face will be rocked off.
Isn't this cool? I discovered the HTML code for making an unordered list....

AJ's Listening Page, Volume 1

2008-04-06T16:57:00.001-07:00

Ever wonder what an on-his-way-to-being-famous composer listens to? Well, now you'll know. Inspired by Mike's recent post about his mix-of-the-month club, I've decided to start posting blog entries of stuff I'm listening to, in two categories: "In The Car" (the CD currently in my car's CD player--I don't have a changer so you'll only get one at a time) and "On The iPod." I'm hoping to post maybe every other week, and to keep it consistent I'll try to post on Sundays. So, I hereby present to you... AJ's Listening Page, Volume 1!

In The Car

X&Y - Coldplay
I decided on the trip that this was my single favorite album of all time. I like Coldplay's two previous albums, as well (Parachutes and A Rush Of Blood To The Head), but this is a masterpiece. I could go on for probably more than a full post's length, but I'll restrain myself this time. The musicianship of the whole band, and the compositional brilliance of the songwriting (both in lyrics and music), is in evidence through every minute of every song. In aesthetic and artistic terms, the meshing of the lyrics and music is the best on any album I've ever heard; and there is never a note, a chord or a musical line out of place anywhere. The other thing that makes it my favorite album of all is that there are no songs on the album that I dislike, which I cannot say for any other albums I might consider (even U2 albums). This in addition to the album having multiple songs that would probably make my top 20 song list of all time, including "Fix You," "A Message," "Swallowed In The Sea" and "Kingdom Come." Tracks 1-4, 8, and 11-13 are pure brilliance; the rest are just amazing. Okay, that's enough for now. On to...

On The iPod

(I think I'll usually try to keep this category to three songs or albums in each edition. As per proper punctuation rules, italics indicate either a complete classical work or an album, while "quotes" indicate an individual song [as you will note in the paragraph above].)

Fratres by Arvo Pärt
Pärt is an Estonian composer of minimalistic music, particularly a style known sometimes as "holy minimalism" (and ridiculed sometimes as "Holy minimalism, Batman!"). This is one of his best-known works--a hauntingly beautiful piece for four cellos. It's one of those pieces in which the composer sets up a pattern, writes the beginning, and then lets the rest of the piece write itself (I hope to write a piece like this someday, it just seems too easy). In this particular piece, he writes a chord progression which begins at a very high pitch; then he repeats the progression nine times (I think), and each time the progression starts on a different, lower pitch, until it ends in the deep middle-low range of the cellos. The piece is about 10 minutes long, but it never gets boring because of the balance of repetition (the same general progression) and contrast (different chords in the progression in different ranges). When I saw Shakespeare's Richard III at Cal State Fullerton a few years ago, this piece was used very effectively as background music; it was especially clever because the title of the work, which is Latin for "brothers," captures the fraternal conflict at the center of the play. It's a really cool piece.

Toccata and Fugue in D Minor, BWV 565 by Johann Sebastian Bach (performed by Ton Koopman in the version I'm listening to)
This is that famous organ piece that conjures up Halloween-style spookiness for most people, but it's a great piece of music notwithstanding. This version, performed by Netherlands conductor and organist Ton Koopman, is the only version I've ever heard where the performer plays trills on the long notes of the opening. It's certainly within contemporary performance practice of the 18th century, but I've never heard it done on this particular piece before. According to the Wikipedia article linked on Koopman's name above, he has been criticized by some for overuse of ornamentation, and in addition to the opening there's certainly a lot more ornamentation than I'm used to. But like I said, historically speaking it's legit, and I like this version, though perhaps not as much as the version I listened to growing up. Funny how the first recording you hear of a particular piece tends to stick in your head as your default interpretation--I've noticed this with several classical works. But in any case, this is an interesting recording of an excellent piece.
(NOTE: I wanted to put up MP3 samples contrasting Koopman's opening with the traditional one, for those of you not familiar with the piece, but since I purchased the file from the iTunes music store it's in m4p protected format [not to be confused with mp4], and the only legal ways to circumvent that protection involve personal use. Putting the sample on my website for YOU to listen to doesn't count as MY personal use, so unfortunately I guess you'll just have to investigate it on your own.)

Various songs by Céline Dion
I know, I know (as I duck the rotten tomatoes from my readers), the truth comes out: I'm secretly a Céline Dion fan. Not too much, but just enough. I remember hearing her songs on the radio when I was younger (back in the days before I disowned radio), and just recently I bought seven of them from iTunes for old times' sake. And now, as a (more) mature composer, I still enjoy them. They're not great songs, by any means, but they're catchy and fun to listen to and I really like Dion's voice: it's powerful and versatile and very distinctive. An article by the excellent culture writer Gene Edward Veith in World Magazine several weeks ago compared "pop culture" to junk food: It's okay to indulge in junk food every once in a while, as long as your primary diet is substantial and healthy food. Translation: It's okay to enjoy Céline Dion as long as the other artists on my listening page are as good as Coldplay, Pärt and Bach.

Comments are welcomed, encouraged and solicited. Please feel free to comment on the first three items as well as dissing me for liking Céline Dion.

Recent Blogs of Note

2008-04-04T14:24:00.000-07:00

A quick update on some of the blogs I've been reading lately. My attention to these is more sporadic than the blogs currently in the sidebar, which is why these latest won't be added there; but you should still check them out yourself anyway.

1. Eleventary. This is a new blog by George Grant that has as its premise that each post (not including the title) must be exactly eleven words. The blog's tagline is "An Exercise in Compositional Conciseness, Preciseness, and (Sometimes) Not So Niceness" (which also has eleven words--count 'em!). Try commenting on one of his posts, using eleven words, and you'll find that it's not as easy as it seems. There's nothing too profound or crazy here but it makes for a fun read.

2. The Scriptorium Daily. This is a blog sponsored by Biola's Torrey Institute; my brother Mark is currently taking Torrey's high school course and will be entering the official Torrey Institute at Biola in the fall. The professors write on a very wide range of topics, from politics to theology to art to culture to Super Smash Bros. Brawl to the drawings of one of the authors' seven-year-old son. I haven't found an RSS feed, and even if I did I probably wouldn't add it to my Google Reader because there are multiple posts per day. But I wish I had time to read all of it because it's all brilliant. My favorite contributors are John Mark Reynolds, who has offered some amazingly insightful comments on the upcoming election and literature and love and marriage and--well, suffice it to say he's awesome (he's also the one who wrote a review of Brawl); and Fred Sanders, Mark's personal favorite, who is just as brilliant and even funnier. Check it out.

3. Inland Traveler. This is the latest blog by Carolyn Burns Bass, Marge's mother and one of my favorite bloggers (you may remember her brilliant blog, Fun With Blanks). "CBB" is writing a weekly column for the Riverside Press-Enterprise newspaper, which will be posted on the Inland Traveler blog. So go along for the ride!

Alright, I'm done for now. I've typed "< a href="http://blahblahblah">" so many times I'm about to turn into an "a href" myself. Whatever the heck that is.

Movie Review: Heavyhandedness and Horrible Humor Haunt Horton Hears A Who

2008-03-29T14:31:00.000-07:00

Before beginning this review, in the interests of full Disclosure I have a few Disclaimers to Declare. A short time ago, following a link on Stephen's blog I read this article by Lou Engle regarding the then-upcoming movie Dr. Seuss' Horton Hears A Who!. Engle "prophesies" that this book and movie is (albeit unwittingly) an allegory about ending abortion, specifically about young people (represented by Jo-Jo in the story) raising their voices in defense of the unborn (somehow also represented by the Whos). I don't know Engle and I've never heard him speak, so I can't say much, but I think this article is not a little far-fetched. I appreciate his belief in God's sovereignty, and how God can use people even without their knowledge to accomplish His ends, but I think some of Engle's connections are pretty ridiculous. He believes the antagonistic kangaroo stands for the "kangaroo court" that legalized abortion in 1973; he offers this explanation for the line "In the Fairfax Apartments (Apartment 12-J)": "12 = government; J = Justice"; he sees the line "The time for all Whos who have blood that is red" corresponding somehow to the "Blood," presumably of Jesus; and (one of my favorites) he interprets little Jo-Jo's exclamation of the nonsense word "YOPP!" as an acronym for Young Ones Praying and Prophesying. I admit that I could be wrong that this is going too far, and it's possible that Engle is correct, but I think that most of that stuff is laughable. And because Engle argued so intensely for this book being used by God to end abortion in our generation, I have to confess that that made me slightly prejudiced against the movie. More than that, I know that movies made from books tend to be far inferior to the books themselves, so I figured that this movie would be no different. SO, all that to say, I wasn't at all sure that the movie would be very good as I entered the theater last night to see it. But I wanted to keep an open mind, and I hoped that the movie itself would dispel my unfavorable expectations.

I wish I could say that it did, but (as you've already gathered from reading the title) it did not. In fact, it was much worse.

To be fair, I feel like everyone else who saw it with me (the people who were left toward the end of C-Pat's birthday party) enjoyed it. Mike said it was one of the best animated movies he's ever seen, and he's likely to buy both the soundtrack and the movie; Courtney thought it was cute. And I remember Jessica telling me that she really liked it. Unfortunately, I must beg to differ.

If I had to sum up the movie in one word, that word would be "stupid." How art thou stupid, movie? Let me count the ways:

1. The humor. It wasn't even random-stupid humor which is funny to some people but not to others (e.g. Napoleon Dynamite or The Office). It was just plain lame and unfunny. Tired, worn-out jokes we've heard a million times before and were funny maybe the first ten times. Which brings me to my next point:

2. The clichés. There was hardly anything original in this movie, and hardly anything was presented in a clever or fresh sort of way. Besides being uninteresting, they made watching the movie tiresome, and I found myself wondering--during the climactic scene, no less--how much longer I'd have to sit and continue watching it.

3. The messages. As the review in our local newspaper asked: "Why is the kangaroo so angry?" I don't understand why the kangaroo is so upset about Horton believing in the Whos; her reasoning (which she shares with a mob who gets angry unrealistically quickly) is, "He's teaching the children to use their imaginations!" This would be a funny line if it weren't so blatantly stupid. Does anyone really think that even a villian would say this? The kangaroo may be authoritarian and closed-minded but she's not stupid enough to say something like that. And the mob. They have even less reason to be upset than the kangaroo does, and they're ready to lynch Horton just because he hears voices. I'm all for movies showing up how easily people get caught up in blind followings (portrayed well, for example, in Monty Python's Life Of Brian), but this is ridiculous. The message that Engle (rightly) attaches to is "A person's a person, no matter how small," but that comes across much more strongly in the musical and the book than the movie. And when the Mayor tries to warn the city council that Whoville is facing its impending doom, they push a smiley-face button which first puts him under a glass jar and then escorts him out with some boot-kicks in his rear. Why are they so intensely focused on making sure that nothing bad ever happens that they have a smiley-face button? The idea of an authoritarian regime perpetuating the myth of a false utopia is a perfect example of how heavyhanded the movie is--does that intense of a subplot, even when it tries to present itself in a funny way, really fit into a movie that's supposed to be whimsical?

4. The music. (You knew this was coming, didn't you?) If I had to score this movie, I would make it sparse, fun, and whimsical. John Powell's score uses a large orchestra with lots of powerful brass and drums, and ridiculously over-the-top triumphant fanfares more suited to a sports drama than a children's story. It was one of many heavyhanded elements that detracted awfully from the movie. According to his IMDB page, Powell has scored a bunch of animated kids' movies including Ice Age 2, Robots, Shrek, and Chicken Run, and has been a prolific composer of all kinds of movies since the late 1990s. I don't know if this was just a random miss for him, but you'd think he'd have gotten the hang of it by now. The musical setting of the one line "A person's a person, no matter how small" in the musical Seussical shows more understanding of Dr. Seuss than this entire score does.

5. The characters. I have nothing against Jim Carrey and Steve Carell--in fact I generally like them--except for the fact that they tend to play exactly the same characters in every one of their movies. But they are miscast in this film, for that very reason. Horton (Carrey) is a silly oaf and the Mayor of Whoville (Carell) is incompetent, narrow-minded and unsympathetic. In the book, if I recall, Horton is good-hearted and simple but not idiotic, and the Mayor is harassed because his message is unbelievable, not because his personality is. And Jo-Jo, who in the book is just a "very small shirker" who doesn't raise his voice at first, in the movie is cast as the Mayor's misunderstood and semi-rebellious son, with emo-style hair and moodiness, who looks different from every other Who. Why?

6. The animation. I have to confess that the animation, in and of itself, was very good, and Courtney in particular said that it was one of her favorite aspects of the movie. But it wasn't Dr. Seuss. It was slick, smooth, airbrushed and picture-perfect; it lacked the bold strokes, goofiness and simplicity of the original drawings. Of course, I know that they weren't trying to animate the original drawings; but (I must qualify this) to a certain degree the medium says something about the message, and the animation certainly betrayed the movie's disconnect with Seuss' original ideas.

These last three points display the movie's greatest weakness: its complete misunderstanding of its subject material. It takes a great story by one of the greatest children's authors of all time, Dr. Seuss, and makes it into a slickly-packaged Disney-style movie, and a bad one at that. I understand that they were making their own movie, but if they had such a great affinity for Dr. Seuss (which they apparently do since they put his name in the movie's title), why did they stray so far from the spirit of the good doctor's story? Perhaps the best example is a scene in which Horton is traveling to Mount Nool to provide the Whos with a safe place to live, and imagines himself to be a daring hero. This initiates a sequence that is a spoof of manga/Pokemon-style animation, with intentionally over-the-top exaggerations and comic-book-type fighting. It's mildly funny, but ridiculously out of place even in this ridiculous movie, and is a poor parody, not a reflection, of Seuss' imagination. Although Seuss weaves important messages into his stories (e.g. "A person's a person, no matter how small"), he does it in such a way that the stories remain fun, funny and whimsical. This movie is none of those things, but rather tiresome, lame and heavyhanded, which sometimes makes it seem like it's trying too hard. The very end is a good example: Horton postulates that even his world, which is unimaginably large to the Whos on the speck of dust, may be only a speck to another, even more unimaginably large world. A worthy sentiment which is not too badly portrayed. As he finishes, the camera pulls out until the world upon which Horton and his friends stand is only a speck floating through space with other specks... until one of the characters from the previous scene floats by, herself as large as the specks. The movie undermines its own message for the sake of a cheap joke.

I suppose I must concede the fact that I may be way off base, because I seem to be the only person who feels this way. A quick glance at Google's compliation of reviews gives the movie 4 out of 5 stars, with 22 positive reviews, 10 neutral ones and only 1 negative. Rotten Tomatoes, another review compiler, shows it at 78% positive from a total of 110 reviews. It also shows this tagline: "Consensus: Stays true to the spirit of Dr. Seuss' classic story." In my view this could not be further from the truth. I suppose this is either a sad Commentary on our Culture's Critical Commentators... or a sad commentary on my Proclivity to Pontificate Peevishly on Pessimistic Points.

Any comments? Agree or disagree? Why?

This Is For All My Artist Friends (Who Don't Read My Blog Anymore)

2008-03-27T19:39:00.000-07:00

(Except for Eleanor--she's the only artist friend left who still reads it....)

I saw this today on Dr. George Grant's blog, Grantian Florilegium, and thought it was awesome, and thought I'd pass it on to all of you. ("All" of you! As if I had lots of readers! Ha! ha!)

(This is my first experiment with embedding video. Isn't it exciting?)

I Just Discovered My New Motto

2008-03-21T14:24:00.000-07:00

I found it on this website. Here's my new motto:

Audio, video, disco.

(It's Latin, of course, and it means "I hear, I see, I learn." But as long as they look like English words, nobody has to know....)

Now, back to AJ's regularly scheduled life....

2008-03-17T17:20:00.001-07:00

I promised in my last post that I would blog about my life soon. Unfortunately, now that I sit at my computer to do so, I realize I don't have much to write about; but I'll give you what I've got.

1. Job searching. I'm still looking for a job. I'm still hoping for something music-related, but at this point it's about time to start exploring other options. I haven't really had any leads, except with a small recording studio in L.A. that I don't think will turn into anything. The economy being how it is, and me having the little to no experience I have... put two and two together. And if you know of any jobs, send 'em my way.

2. Hangin' with the girlfriend factor. This doesn't happen nearly enough as I wish it did, because gas is freakin' expensive and my lovely Eleanor is far away from me in Fullerton. But we see each other sometimes once a week, sometimes once every two weeks, and I fall more in love with her every time. I hung out with her and her family yesterday; we were supposed to take a boat to Catalina Island to attend a surprise birthday party for her cousin. But because of expected bad weather, they wouldn't let anyone make the trip twice in one day, so if we went out to the island, we'd have to stay overnight. We went out to brunch instead with the other cousins and her aunt and uncle who were supposed to go over with us; so it worked out okay for us. But I feel bad for her cousin who was trapped on the island and whose birthday party was forfeited by bad weather.

3. Hangin' with m'friend Jeff. I certainly love my family and love hanging out with them, and I'm grateful to my parents for letting me stay at home while I'm looking for a job, but I think I would be certifiably insane by now if I didn't have Jeff to give me a reason to get out of the house. Jeff is the "assistant worship director" at the church we used to attend in Redlands (before the house church); he also leads a monthly Saturday night worship service--the "River of Worship"--at the church. In addition to just hanging out with Jeff and his wife Carmen, I've played guitar for him at some River of Worship events as well as a few other worship things, like chapels for a Christian high school and Christian Community College. He's a great musician and a terrific worship leader, and it's always a pleasure to play with him.

The most exciting thing Jeff and I have done recently is gotten the chance to lead worship with the River of Worship team for the singles' ministry at Harvest, the Riverside megachurch. We had the good fortune to have a really good sound tech working for us, who recorded the whole service. Jeff did a lot of editing to an already good recording, and he's posted the songs up on the River of Worship Myspace page. This will probably be the only time I'll ever promote a Myspace here on my blog, but the recording is really good and you should check it out: www.myspace.com/riverofworshipmusic. The acoustic guitar that you hear is me; Jeff sings and plays the piano. Give him a bunch of views and song plays and leave a comment and make him happy.

4. Composing rocking music. I just last week finished my latest composition, an art song for bass/baritone voice and piano called New Hope. The text is by my uncle Tom; you should check out his blog because it's cool, and you should check out New Hope in particular because it's the text of my piece. I'm trying to put up the information about the piece on my website but my host server is down for maintenance or some crap like that; I'll let you know when it's back up. I have a couple more composing projects waiting in the wings, and I'll post about them as they begin to take shape.

So that's about it. Check out Jeff's Myspace and comment, check out Uncle Tom's blog and comment. And comment here too. I was reading over a bunch of old posts a few weeks ago, and I used to average 5 comments a post, 7 sometimes, and I even got 12 or 15 occasionally. Why doesn't that happen anymore?

UPDATE, 10:55 pm: My host server has apparently resolved its troubles, because I was able to get on and update my site. So go to the Music page and check out the info on New Hope!

Star Wars: Episode IV According To A Three-Year-Old

2008-03-10T16:34:00.000-07:00

This is one of the funniest YouTube videos I've seen in a long time - a three-year-old girl summarizing Star Wars.

Star Wars according to a 3 year old.

Be sure to click the "more" link under "About This Video" on the right - it has some funny information.

After you've watched that video, if you have two more minutes to spare, watch this version, with clips of the movie spliced in:

Star Wars according to 3 year old (with clips)

In a few days a blog post actually related to me and my life--instead of just relaying funny stuff from the internet--will be forthcoming, I promise....

ALOLCats

2008-03-05T16:00:00.000-08:00

LOL Cats is a sometimes lame, sometimes hilarious site that posts funny pictures of cats with often funnier captions. I'm happy slash sad to say I wasted a few hours on this site several days ago, but just so you, my faithful readers, don't have to do the same, I picked out some of the best for you. (All photos are courtesy of LOL Cats and are copyright of their respective owners.) Here you go; enjoy!

One of my favorite types of pictures/captions is "Invisible" things:

Sometimes the cats are just in funny positions:

But the thing that is really funniest to me is the captions and how they're written. I despise Internet-speak when it's done by ignorant people who can't type, but when it's done well by people who know what they're doing it can be hilarious.

There are some really funny video game ones:

And a parody of an RPG:

But my favorite ones are these of the next type. I'm not always sure what it is about them, but I thought they were awesome.

The spelling in this one is just awesome:

And now for my four most favoritest! Number Four...

Number Three...

Number Two (ominous and hilarious)...

And my favorite, Number One...

I hope you enjoyed these half as much as I did. And look, now you don't have to waste hours on this site picking out good ones! Aren't I such a nice blogger....

You Know You're From Redlands...

2008-02-27T19:27:00.000-08:00

Maybe this is kinda messed up--one, because I'm going to quote people without citing who they are, and two, because I don't support groups on Facebook anyway--but I ran across a funny group on Facebook today called "You know you're from Redlands...." Here are some of the best ones (edited for spelling, punctuation and grammar, of course):

#4. People from RHS [Redlands High School] say REV [Redlands East Valley] is ghetto, while people from REV wish they had been eligible to go to RHS (they tried to use their aunt's address) and take their anger out by beating RHS in sports.

#5 (this one's for Mike). If you went to RHS you kind of regret it, just because you can't TECHNICALLY say you went to the same high school as Landon Donovan. If you went to REV you tell everyone you went to high school with Landon Donovan.

#7. You would be very upset if they decided to tear down the Redlands Post Office, and you might be convinced to march in protest. This would become the most politically charged event in Redlands in about 100 years.

#13. The smell of orange blossoms makes you suddenly misty-eyed.

#18. Del Taco at 2 am is the shadiest your town ever gets.

#21. Going the 7 miles to get In-N-Out is an epic journey. A lot of shit can happen in 7 miles. You make the weenies who were too lazy to go with you regret they missed all the cool stuff that supposedly happened along the way. Next time, you get Bakers.

#31. When everything closes at 10 o'clock regardless if they say they are open 24 hours.

#39. When the food court at the mall consists of "Hot Dog on a Stick."

#50. When you call everyone in your phone book just to find a party on a Friday night... because the only other thing to do is hang out in a parking lot.

#51. When the only reason you come home from college is to get Bakers and Cuca's.

#53. You drive down Citrus, Grove, or Orange and don't see (hardly) any orange trees or groves.

#57. You know what that R on the hill stands for.

#58. You can't figure out why people are excitedly saying "Let's go to the mall!"

#63. You don't think there's anything strange about going shopping in a "Doughnut Hole."

And, my personal favorite (and dedicated to Eleanor):
#55. You know you're from Redlands when your college friends come to visit over break and you give them the "grand tour," which takes three and a half minutes, and then are left with absolutely nothing to do.

Ah. So true.

Train Thought For The Day

2008-02-22T12:16:00.000-08:00

Every good happiness and joy we experience in this life is really just a foretaste of the infinite joy and satisfaction we will experience in God in the next life. And in the same way, every sinful deception that promises happiness and joy, but lets us down and leaves us unsatisfied and empty, is really just a foretaste of the infinite emptiness and unsatisfaction we would experience without God in the next.

"untitled 3 is my title
for this appendicular poem,
pointed only by this particular moment.
I put all pretense to rest.

hello sinners,
are you sinning less?
I tell you,
it makes no difference.
But listen now to this:

The Logos
was not only a man.
He is The Logos,
Who by Him(self)
became a man.

I hope you reverberate
and have no peace, sinners,
while you sin.
By OLogos,
I behoove you
to pray the same for me."

- Aaron Little

Well, I've finally made the switch...

2008-02-13T11:54:00.000-08:00

... from Safari to Firefox as my default web browser.

It was a tough decision. I've used Safari ever since I've had my computer (seeing as Internet Explorer ::spits:: was the only other alternative that came with it), and I've always loved it. I like the way it looks, it had all my customizable settings just the way I liked them, it had all my bookmarks in the right place....

But it was time for a change. I've run into several websites that don't work properly on Safari, and since the primary alternative for those sites besides Firefox is Internet Explorer ::spits::, Firefox seemed the best way to go. It seems to run faster on my computer, somehow. And Firefox is like the Google (products) of web browsers--young, hip, postmodern and edgy.

There are still some things I don't like about Firefox. I think that the way Safari looks is sharper--the big icons for back, forward, reload, etc. in the top left corner of Firefox look silly to me, like large print. It was slightly annoying to take the 10 minutes it required to transfer all my bookmarks over. And it lacks some nice Mac shortcuts that Safari had: like pressing the down key to go to the end of a line of text, or being able to type the first letter of a button in a dialogue box along with Command to push that button instead of having to click it. But I'm afraid I'll have to go without such things. ::sheds a single tear for Safari::

Goodbye, Safari; rest in peace. Hello, young hip edginess.

UPDATE: I think I may have jinxed myself. Ever since posting this, Firefox has been running unnaturally slowly and I've had various kinds of problems. It's also started to put a text cursor wherever I click on a page, even if it's on a button (and it stays there for a while, since it loads slowly now), which is really annoying. Killer.

Read the article--what more needs to be said?

2008-01-27T15:32:00.000-08:00

International Delete-Your-Myspace-Account Day is January 30th, 2008.

P.S. While you're at it, check out this hilarious page from the same site (innocentenglish.com): Rules for Guys Around Women: How Men Score and Lose Points in the Relationship Game.

AJHarbison.com is LIVE!

2008-01-22T23:30:00.000-08:00

I'm sure that most of my readers are on my email list, and will have already seen the email by the time they read this post; but if not, here's a news flash for ya--my brand-new website is online! It has all the old features of my Geocities website that you know and love, like the lyrics to your favorite songs, album info and my photo gallery. But it looks much cooler, and has a whole bunch of new stuff like information on my art, theatrical and film music and updated links. Check it out:

www.ajharbison.com

And, something I didn't tell my email list: On the Bio page, scroll down to the bottom and move your mouse two lines below the "back to top" link. You should roll over a hidden link which will take you to an Alternate Bio page which is more fun than the bio I have posted. Enjoy!

There's still a link to my Guestbook on the "Links" page, so please leave me a comment and let me know what you think. And check back often for news and updates!

P.S. If you're not on my email list, and you would like to be, shoot me an email at ajharbison@gmail.com and I'll take care of that. I promise not to give your email to anyone else or spam you, and I won't send you updates too often.

P.P.S. You'll notice (or not) that although the title of my sidebar link to "AJ Harbison Music" has stayed the same, the address it links to has changed to my new site. And while I was doing that, I thought I'd update my "Blogs" links--and so I have. I took off several who haven't posted recently, and added Tom's and Rymac's blogs. If you haven't yet, check 'em out!

Waiting

2008-01-11T23:04:00.000-08:00

Sorry I've been absent for a while--busy job searching, and all that. If you know of anyone who would like to offer a starving young composer a job, let me know. In the meantime, some thoughts on life....

I realized recently that my whole life, in almost every phase, has been focused on waiting. Not entirely, of course--I'm exaggerating to make a point. But it's an interesting one. In elementary school, we look forward to high school (not so much for me, since the line was rather blurry). In high school, I was waiting for graduation, and ultimately college. During each semester, no matter how much I enjoyed it, I was waiting for the next break; during each break, I was waiting for school to start again. Ultimately, again, I was waiting for graduation, then waiting for the road trip, then waiting to get back. Now I'm waiting to get a job. But once I get a job, I'll be waiting to get married, then waiting to go to grad school, then waiting again for graduation. Again, it's not that I've been impatient, or haven't enjoyed each stage. Perhaps "waiting" is the wrong word; maybe "looking ahead" is more accurate. It's always been present, in the back of my head, that where I am isn't my ultimate goal, but there's something else I'm working towards and looking to. It reminded me, when I thought of it, of my concept of "coastin'"--a song I wrote whose term came to mean, for myself, coasting through life, keepin' on moving, not putting down any roots or experiencing anything to its fullest. How can I experience anything to the fullest, when I'm always looking ahead to something else?

The road trip turned out to be a great lesson in that regard, ironically. I knew there would be so much more than I could ever record, so I vowed to live in the moment and not worry in the moment about how to save it for future reference (something that I've always done). And so I learned to live in the moment. Then, if I remembered it later to record it, fine; if not, the moment was the important thing.

I'm not really sure what to do about my tendency always to look ahead. There is, of course, planning that must take place--that's just common sense, and prudence. But I need to learn the lesson the trip taught me on a grander scale: how to live in the stage of life I'm in, and be content, and be here, and not in a job, or in a marriage, or in grad school. God has me here, now.

Still gotta learn that one.

A Great Summary of the Journey

2007-12-23T21:03:00.000-08:00

Mike Morabito has written a terrific summary of our journey into the heart of America, which he's posted on his blog and our trip webiste. You should check it out.

We're Ba-ack!

2007-12-16T20:40:00.000-08:00

Team America has returned triumphantly from its journey into the heart of America! And subsequently, The Matrix Has You makes its own triumphant return!

A few random comments, links and insights for my first post back:

1. If you haven't been checking the road trip website regularly, we have hundreds of pictures available from our journey (the final days' worth will be posted soon), as well as blog posts from various places all over the country. If you have checked the website regularly, good job--why don't you head on over now and see if you've missed anything.

2. If you'd like to read the blog posts that I wrote on the website, here are the links (in chronological order):

(pre-trip) ... And Their Trip Was An Inspiration To Many
For Nostalgia's Sake... (regarding Yellowstone National Park)
Chewing on the Big Apple (regarding New York City)
Hard Times in the Big Easy (regarding New Orleans and Hurricane Katrina)

But you really should read everybody's posts.

3. Due in part to Team America's visit and encouragement, my Uncle Tom--English major, construction worker, and talented poet extraordinaire--has started a blog (his first ever), where he'll be posting some of his poems. I personally love his poetry (you may notice I've added his name to my Blogger profile under the "Favorite Books" category), and I'd like to encourage all my readers to check out his new site. I have one caveat to offer to the prospective visitor:

But with that said, you can visit his site and leave a comment here: Flying Penguins.

4. A helpful insight from church this morning:

We have been saved from the penalty of sin (justification)

We are being saved from the power of sin (sanctification)

We one day will be saved from the presence of sin (glorification)

5. And finally, for your amusement, a T-shirt my brother found on the internet and almost bought me for Christmas (no word on why he decided not to; picture courtesy of onehorseshy.com):

It's so me.

My Eleventy-First Post!

2007-08-28T12:40:00.001-07:00

The Matrix Has You is going on a four-month hiatus due to our journey into the heart of America. Any posts which I'll be writing between now and our return will be posted there. So do yourself a favor by clicking the link below and redirecting to:

A Journey into the Heart of America

My First Post on the JIA Blog!

2007-08-15T17:49:00.000-07:00

N.B. "JIA" is my awesome, super-cool abbreviation for our "Journey Into America" blog, which has now officially moved to www.ajourneyintotheheartofamerica.com.

I've just posted my first entry on our road trip blog. Check it out:

... And Their Trip Was An Inspiration To Many

An Article On Art and Worldview; or, Thomas Kinkade vs. Dutch Calvinists

2007-07-27T13:18:00.000-07:00

I read this article in an issue of Credenda/Agenda magazine recently, and copied it to save for myself because it was so insightful. I was going to retype the whole thing to share it with y'all, but fortunately C/A had it posted on their website, so through the wonders of the internet and "copy'n'paste" I don't have to, and you can still see it here. (If you'd like to see it on the C/A page ["in its original context," as Google would say] here is the link.)

N.B. From the inside front cover of each issue: "Credenda/Agenda is a religiously and philosophically Trinitarian cultural journal. The magazine is designed as a tribute to the good life, the life that can only be known in a world in subjection to the Trinity." The words "credenda" and "agenda" are two Latin words that mean respectively, in C/A's translation, "things to be believed" and "things to be done."

Kinkade and the van Xs
Joost Nixon

"Kitsch causes two tears to flow in quick succession. The first tear says: how nice to see children running on the grass! The second tear says: How nice to be moved, together with all mankind, by children running on the grass! It is the second tear which makes kitsch kitsch." Milan Kundera

I have always felt somewhat guilty for the odium the artwork of Thomas Kinkade inspires in me. No one likes to be considered ungenerous, and who wants to imply to friends and loved ones that the canvas hanging over the mantel is, shall we say, a trifle overvalued? You casuists out there might rejoice to hear that after doing a bit of research, all guilt decamped.

Guilt's departure was inspired by an examination of the public record. Kinkade, a well-known Christian artist, has given occasion for the enemies of the Lord to blaspheme. His business practices with gallery franchisees have occasioned several lawsuits for fraud. He lost several of them. His former business associates recount nights of hard drinking at strip clubs. And taking the Grand Prize is Kinkade's habit of publicly marking territory, the most infamous instance undoubtedly being the Winnie-the-Pooh incident, which occurred outside the Disneyland Hotel. Lest we appear to digress, the original point of this article simply was to illustrate how theology comes out the end of the paint brush. This we will proceed to do, with the passing comment that theology comes out other places too. Ahem.

My intent is to compare Kinkade's works against some of the paintings of the Dutch Golden Age. Now please don't start whining about unfair fights. The Dutch Golden Age is particularly helpful when we want to talk about art and theology—not when their subject matter is explicitly religious in theme, but precisely when it is not. Of particular interest are the many still-life paintings to which the period gave birth. So our goal is not an artistic horse race, but rather to reason from the painting to the kind of preaching each artist heard on Sunday. The artists of the Dutch Golden Age we will refer to collectively as the "van Xs." And to help our evaluation along, we will employ the first three of Francis Schaeffer's four standards of judgment: 1) technical excellence, 2) validity, and 3) worldview.

The matter of technical excellence clearly is not at issue. Both Kinkade and the "van Xs" demonstrate some level of skill. They are able to render that which they desire (equally well, for purposes of argument), unlike some of us, whose figures always come out androgynous, no matter what we do.

The second criterion is validity. Schaeffer writes, "By validity I mean whether an artist is honest to himself and to his world view or whether he makes his art only for money or for the sake of being accepted." Here is perhaps Kinkade's greatest treachery. The Painter of Light™ has marketed himself more brazenly than a working girl in a Frankfurt bordello. Besides having over 90 galleries marketing his prints, Kinkade lends his name to such diverse products as La-Z-Boy recliners, night-lights, golf gear, and yes, even housing developments sporting cozy Kinkade cottages on cobblestone streets. Kinkade's art bombs the validity test.

The third criterion is worldview. Does the body of work created by the artist tell the truth? One NPR commentator compared Kinkade's paintings to a cup of coffee with fifty-three spoons of sugar in it. The flowers are always blooming, the lights glowing, the gardens weedless. To Kundera, who was quoted above, kitsch is simply art that "denies the existence of s***." This is Kinkade's premise. All the dogs in Kinkade's universe are the poopless variety. If he were one of the Sons of Korah, none of his psalms would ever cry, How long, O Lord? But scooping and moaning are a real part of the human experience, and this is what makes redemption so magnetic.

Contrast Kinkade's worldview with the Van Xs of the Dutch Golden Age (seventeenth century). These Dutch artists, so able to render a beautiful, stain-free world, intentionally painted mortality into their still lifes. To these Dutch Calvinists, the world was a place of beauty but also a place with rats and picnic ants and the relentless march of time. God created the world, and it was all very good. But then came Genesis 3, and now creation groans. In order to reckon with the Fall of man in their still lifes, they included symbols known as vanitas. If the subject was a feast, the artist rendered the food as slightly past its prime. If you look carefully, you might spy a mouse coming for the leftovers. In paintings of flower arrangements, the artist included bugs, and some of the flowers would be drooping. Their point, almost at polar opposites with Kinkade, is that life is short, and that the pleasures of the material world, like feasts and flowers, are passing. So put your spiritual house in order.

Returning to Kinkade, we might observe that his antless picnics are a result of the theology of our day. And what is that? Why, Pelagianism, of course. Setting aside the speculation that Eden's pre-fall beauty must have been more terrible than a Kinkade painting, Kinkade's body of work never gets around to the Fall and the pervasive nature of original sin. And when there is no Fall, there is no need for the gospel.

(Copyright © 2007 Credenda/Agenda. All rights reserved.)

Fortotrain!

A Thought Experiment Throughout The Day

2007-07-18T00:07:00.000-07:00

What does my being in Christ mean for me, right now?
It means that my sins have been washed away, removed from me as far as the east is from the west. It means that because I am in Him, His mercies to me are new every morning. It means that I am a new creation, able and willing to put off the old life and put on the new, being clothed in His perfect righteousness. "Thank You, Lord, for forgiveness."

What does my being in Christ mean for me, right now?
It means that I am His child, and that He delights to bless me. It means that He takes pleasure in providing for me a place to live, a car, a job, a paycheck, and food to sustain me. "Thank You, Lord, for this food."

What does my being in Christ mean for me, right now?
It means that because I am forgiven and clothed in His righteousness, I can come before Him in prayer. It means that I can stand in His Presence and not be consumed by His wrath, but approach Him as a servant, and as a child. It means that I am granted access into the throne room of the Sovereign Lord of the universe, and He extends His scepter to me. "Thank You, Lord, for prayer."

What does my being in Christ mean for me, right now?
It means that I am united with all believers, and that we share a bond that is deeper than any merely human connection. It means that I can have relationships that are deeper than any other human relationships because they are founded on something more than human. It means that I can have "fellowship so deep" with my fellow Christians. "Thank You, Lord, for friends and fellowship."

A Short Essay For Your Edification

2007-07-04T00:57:00.001-07:00

I was recently cajoled into reading Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen's classic novel, by a certain female friend of mine who insisted that it held the key to a woman's heart. As said certain female was taking a class at the time in which she was forced to write "formula essays" (introduction paragraph with thesis, exactly three body paragraphs [no more and no less], and concluding paragraph), she joked that she wanted a formula essay from me when I finished the book. Here is the result.

N.B. (but no prize this time) The spelling of "choose" in the final sentence of the essay is a reference to Ms. Austen's spelling of the selfsame word.

Andrew J. Harbison
Miss Crawford
7/3/07

The Key to a Woman’s Heart; As Defined By Pride and Prejudice

It has often been said that Jane Austen, in addition to being a fine novelist, also brings to her novels a keen eye for human nature and social commentary. It has also often been said that her magnum opus, Pride and Prejudice, holds the key to a woman’s heart, perhaps as a result of the aforementioned characteristics. In this paper I will show that Pride and Prejudice teaches that there are three kinds of women, personified by three different characters, and that there are three separate ways (respectively) to their hearts.

The first type of woman is illustrated by the character of Lydia Bennet. She is flighty, flirty and will do anything for a man’s attention. Her mind is empty and admits no improvement or desire therefor. The key to the heart of this type of woman is simply to give her what she wants: attention. Her lover/husband, Mr Wickham, has no real or lasting affection for her, but she is devoted to him because he flatters her and gives her the attention she craves.

The second type of woman is illustrated by the character of Charlotte Lucas. She is a moderately bright, sensible girl, but her only desire is to be settled into a comfortable life. The key to the heart of this type of woman is also to give her what she wants: a reasonable home, situation and income. Mr Collins, despite being insufferably overpolite and socially awkward, is able to provide a mediocre life for Charlotte, and so she marries him with no pretensions of happiness but with the assurance that she will not lack a decent (or at least barely acceptable) living.

The third type of woman is illustrated by the character of Elizabeth Bennet. She is intelligent, witty, and has idealistic and romantic notions of actually marrying for love. It is easy to determine what she wants because she states her husband’s responsibilities in the penultimate chapter (speaking of her care of her sister Jane): “Dearest Jane! Who could have done less for her? But make a virtue of it by all means. My good qualities are under your protection, and you are to exaggerate them as much as possible; and, in return, it belongs to me to find occasions for teasing and quarrelling with you as often as may be....” She desires her husband to protect her and honor her, to praise her (to herself and others), to provide for her, and to truly love her, not for who she appears to be or who others make her out to be, but for who she really is.

In conclusion, women are not really as complicated as men think they are, because there are really only three kinds. Jane Austen presents these three kinds of women in some of her characters in her classic novel, Pride and Prejudice (three characters, to be exact; they are Lydia Bennet, Charlotte Lucas, and Elizabeth Bennet). This is because Jane Austen has a keen eye for human nature and social commentary. The first sentence of the novel is this: “It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife.” And with only three options and three simple ways to win their hearts, it remains only for him to chuse which one he desires.

This One's For Stephen

2007-06-26T23:43:00.000-07:00

A slate.com story I found on MSN this afternoon:

The State of the Ninja

And in case you don't have time to read the full story, or just don't care, here's the best quote:

"The Israeli affinity for ninjas makes sense when you consider that ninjas are basically supercool Jews. Both practice esoteric traditions that must be kept pure or they'll lose their power, both wear black outfits, and both can destroy much larger and more numerous opponents. The main difference is that while observant Jews spend a lot of time praying, observant ninjas spend a lot of time hiding and killing people."

And observant bloggers spend a lot of time finding funny stories online and passing them on to friends.

Two Quick Shout-Outs

2007-06-23T02:01:00.000-07:00

Hello everyone,
You'll have to forgive me for not posting more in the past few weeks--I've been working full-time and doing that whole "real world" thing. Only two more months....

But in the meantime (until my next post, that is, not until the road trip) here are two other noteworthy posts that you should check out.

First, Marge's mom's blog Fun With Blanks, one of the greatest ideas for a blog ever, is back in action. Go comment on her latest post, and perhaps she'll post more often. And then we'd all be happier.

And second, my brother is up to his old tricks again. His latest Xanga post (darthharbison, not So_Thoughtful) is a tribute to Stargate SG-1, which he hails as the second greatest TV show ever. Somehow House isn't mentioned; perhaps he considers that third. Alias also doesn't make the top two. But in any case, his tribute primarily consists of a long list of quotes from the series. The whole thing is quite funny, but two quotes in particular caught my attention, for two of my fellow Team Americans:
For C-Pat: Jack: "I hope you like Guinness, sir. I find it a perfect substitute for . . . uh . . . food."
And for Eleanor: Jack: "Au revoir . . . it's French for ciao."

You can read the full post here.

Ciao till next time!

A Random Friday Night Rant

2007-06-08T23:31:00.000-07:00

- First and foremost: You'll notice some changes to the good ol' Matrix-Has-You blogsite. I've added a link to the road trip blog (under the trip's title, "A Journey Into The Heart Of America") on the sidebar in its own little compartment, underneath my music site. Also, you may or may not have noticed that underneath the "Random Stuff About Me" little compartment, I've reformatted my archives (and they look sooooo much better now--I hate that stupid hierarchy thing), AND I've added two ways to subscribe to the blog, RSS and email (both powered by FeedBurner, a useful little blog feed site which has recently become the newest child in the Google family). So if you haven't yet subscribed, do so! (Contact me or Mike if you'd like help setting up an RSS reader, or if you don't know what it is but would like to know.)

- Can I just vent for a short while about Paris Hilton? Thanks. She is pathetic and she's a disgrace to herself, everyone she knows and her country. I'd like to think I wouldn't wish a jail sentence on anyone, but it's a darn good thing that she went back to jail. If she had been allowed to stay on house arrest there would be reason to lose faith in our judicial system, our law enforcement system and probably our psychiactric medicine system too all at once. I'm glad someone in this case (the judge) hasn't lost his head. Earth to Hilton. Actions have consequences, and if you're going to be stupid enough to do something stupid then you have to face the consequences. And you have to be woman enough (in her case) to face them with dignity. Earth to Hilton again. Jail is not supposed to be a happy place. You don't go there because you have a lot of money, or because you're pretty (not that she is), or because you wanna have a good time. You go there because you've done something wrong. Earth to Hilton again. Grow the heck up. It's difficult to imagine something more immature than throwing a temper tantrum and having to be dragged out of a courtoom, literally kicking and screaming, because you're getting what you deserve. I didn't hear--did she get charged with contempt of court as well? Part of me hopes so. Absolutely pathetic. Ugh. ::shudders::

- Now that that's out of the way... To Kill A Mockingbird. Somewhere in the nebulous mists of the past few years, I decided that it would be my favorite novel (or at least that that would be my answer, were anyone to pose me the question). I hadn't read it for several years but I remembered liking it immensely. Now (immediately following The Da Vinci Code, which wasn't really that great) it is serving as the starting-point for my summer reading list, and I am absolutely in love. Now it unquestionably holds the title of My Favorite Novel Of All Time, head and shoulders above anything else. The writing style is beautiful. She (Harper Lee, that is) likes to use quaint or clever turns of phrase to express ordinary concepts, and writes cleverly simply for the sake of being clever, and I love that (I try to do it as much as possible in my own writing). Her attention to detail in regards to this is meticulous but never overbearing. The characterizations of lesser characters are swift and sure, and her primary characterizations are rich with reality and complexity while retaining the simplicity of a child's world and experience (which often is not as simple as we may think). And the architecture of the story is flawless. Reading it over again and knowing the general arc of the plot and seeing all the foreshadowing is amazing, and her economy of materials (one of my primary gauges of the quality of any work of art) is efficient and most artful, in the way that she uses one event to advance several different storylines and deepen characterizations. I'm just now beginning Part Two, and while the overall story and feel stays upbeat and light, you can just feel the gathering storm growing beneath it all and beginning to come to the surface. And in addition to its impeccable aesthetics, the story is just very engaging, touching, and moving, while being a heck of a lot of fun to read.

Although movies can never live up to the books they are based on, the 1962 black-and-white version of To Kill A Mockingbird (starring Gregory Peck) was a great movie--one of the few movies I own. It won three Academy Awards, including Best Actor for Mr. Peck (as Atticus Finch). I remember that several years ago the American Film Institute (AFI--not the band) celebrated 100 years of American films by choosing top 100 lists. They had the top 100 movies, of course (Citizen Kane got #1), but in a more creative move they chose the 50 greatest heroes and the 50 worst villains. (Just in case you were wondering, the #1 villain was Hannibal Lecter from The Silence of the Lambs.) I remember watching this live on TV, and after seeing that Indiana Jones was the #2 hero, I couldn't wait to see #1. And in a remarkable twist of fate, the AFI board and the film community had chosen... Atticus Finch in To Kill A Mockingbird. I was stunned at such an unexpected choice; but it gives me hope that all is not lost in Hollywood. The AFI website describes Atticus as a "deeply principled and idealistic attorney," but he is so much more than that. Rather than trying to extol all his virtues here, I'll just send you to the book; but I will say that he is a man among men, and although he is flawed like everyone else, his absolute commitment to his principles and his absolute commitment to his children do indeed make him one of the greatest heroes of the movies, and of literature as well. One of the most inspiring characters I've ever read.

Many people describe To Kill A Mockingbird as "that novel about racism I had to read in high school," but it is so much more than that. Rather than continuing to extol all its virtues here, I'll just demand that you read it as soon as possible. You won't regret it. It is absolutely My Favorite Novel Of All Time and certainly one of the greatest novels in American history and in all of history. And now it's time for me to go read Chapter 12....

***UPDATE*** Mike was gracious enough to link to this post and thank me for my rant about Paris Hilton. Apparently he liked it so much that he described it as "our official position;" I'm grateful for this, of course, although I'm not exactly sure who he means by "our." But his title ("Paris Hilton is... NOT BREAKING NEWS!") reminded me of something that I actually forgot to include last night. I must have seen the story on three or four different newscasts yesterday, including on CNN, a network I formerly held a lot of respect for. Hilton's story is not worthy news at all, much less for a network like CNN who hopefully has much more important things to report on (like the three stories Mike mentioned in his post). I can't really imagine why there was a crowd of reporters on the scene, unless E! or TMZ sent over every employee they have. There may be hope for Hollywood but any shreds of trust I had left in the news media are slowly slipping away. By giving her even a brief passing mention, let alone a live broadcast from the scene, they're validating every childish, immature thing she does. Earth to news media. That's why she's doing this stuff, to get attention. Stop giving it to her! Maybe if we just ignore her, she'll go away! And then our world would be a better place.

And there would be more time to read. I read up through chapter 15 last night. Y'all need to get started so I don't get too far ahead.

An Epiphany At Work

2007-06-05T23:37:00.000-07:00

I usually take advantage of my 3 breaks at work (two 15-minute ones and my 30-minute lunch break) to read; currently I'm working my way through Gardner Read's comprehensive tome dealing with Music Notation (I'm up to page 400). But tonight for my last break (9 to 9:15 pm) I felt like I needed to get some fresh air, so I took a walk outside. As soon as I stepped outside and saw the stars shining through the tattered shreds of cloud and felt the wind blowing and reinvigorating me, my mind immediately started writing a story. It began as a chronicle of my experience and evolved eventually into the scattered beginnings of another Flannery-O'Connor-type story; but it was refreshingly stimulating to think about, as I let my mind wander where it would. And I realized one of the reasons why I get tired of work and why I would never be able to work there for my career: there's no creativity involved. I sit at a computer, look at data and enter it into the database according to fixed rules devised by our Tech Writers. There's no room for individual input or creativity at all. And, being a composer, creativity is rather important to my mental and intellectual well-being.

Now, I must qualify this by saying that my job does appeal to other aspects of my personality (perfectionism, organization, and the like--my T and J qualities, as opposed to my N ones; although sitting at a computer instead of interacting with people also appeals to my I qualities), and I am greatly, greatly blessed to have this job. (If nothing in that last parenthesis meant anything to you, click here.) It's been a great job to have, especially while still in college, and I hope that God will see fit to provide me with another job at least as good upon my return from the road trip. But as I said, there is nothing in my job that allows me to be creative. Which is why letting my mind work on a random story tonight was so refreshing. And why I will never make a career out of being a HAZARD INSURANCE PROC I at Assurant.

Trip Out!

2007-06-05T00:44:00.000-07:00

Mike has created a blog for the road trip. You should check it out:

A Journey Into The Heart Of America

You can check up on our planning progress, get any new info or updates, and even contribute to buying us a gallon of gas! (Which, by the way, we would all greatly appreciate....)

(And in case some of you still haven't read about the road trip, here is Mike's original post about it.)

Cue Pomp and Circumstance. On second thought, don't you dare.

2007-05-22T00:55:00.001-07:00

So... I graduated this weekend! Here's the rundown:

- Honors Convocation, Friday night, 7 pm: Eleanor and I are both recognized as Summa Cum Laude graduates and get cool medallions.

- University Commencement, Saturday morning, 8 am: I hear the coroner from CSI tell me never to become an actor, turn my tassel and officially gradumucate meself. My parents and brother attend; Eleanor does not.

- College of the Arts Commencement, Saturday morning, 10:30 am: I rock the house with my speech, get my name called and get a certificate. Eleanor and her friend Courtney join my parents and brother in attendance.

- University Commencement, Sunday morning, 8 am: Eleanor hears the earthquake lady diss New Orleans, turns her tassel and officially gradumucates 'erself. Her parents attend; I do not.

- College of Humanities and Social Sciences Modern Languages and Literatures Commencement, Sunday morning, 11 am: Eleanor rocks the house with her Eiffel-Towers-and-wine-bottles tassel, gets her name called and gets a certificate. I join her parents, Aunt Jo and Uncle Chuck, Courtney, and Rae in attendance by breaking in.

Then there was lunch on Saturday with my parents, my brother, her parents and Courtney; the other Courtney's party (Patino, that is) on Saturday at 4:30; Jared's party on Saturday at, um, I don't even remember what time; and Eleanor's party which went from 2:30 on Sunday afternoon to 1:00 at night if you count her and her mom and I staying up late and talking after everyone left.

And then there was work. Last week, this was the decoration given to a fellow associate at Assurant (someone I don't know):

(Sorry, for some reason I can't rotate the picture. In real life it was right side up.) I assume that this person probably graduated with an MBA or something else which would be generally beneficial to his or her career at Assurant. Or at least one would hope so. I graduated with a Bachelor of Music in Composition, which is not beneficial in any way to what I do (generally or otherwise); but someone felt bad for me and put this in my cubicle:

Pathetic. I think they just stole the balloon from the other person's cube....

But I got in to work this afternoon, after the weekend, and I think Stephanie (my boss) must have either 1) felt sorry for me or 2) felt really proud of me, because this time my cube was all decked out:

The balloon was back, but now there were two big signs that said "Congrats GRAD" and sparkly little "2007" things all over my desk. It was kinda cool.

When work was over, I left the sparkly 2007 things on my desk and the balloon on the shelf but brought the two signs home. They now proudly mark Mike's and my respective doors in our apartment (this is mine):

Now every time I see it, I'll smile and say thank you!

P.S. Thanks to Courtney (Patino, that is) finally getting her pictures from prom, I've added 16 new photos to my Picasa web album I wrote about two weeks ago, including a few new pictures of Eleanor and I dancing. Check it out:

Campus Crusade Prom 5.4.07

IT'S ALL OVER!!!

2007-05-17T23:00:00.000-07:00

I took my last final today at 5 pm and was done by 6 pm. I wrote a note to my teacher in the back of my blue book, saying how much I enjoyed the class, how great of a teacher she was, etc. and all I could think while I was writing was "Holy crap, it's over, I'm done, I'm done, it's all over, holy crap it's over!"

In two days I will be a college graduate. Dang. I'm excited.

P.S. This is my 100th post on this blog! And what better way to celebrate a 100th post than to GRADUATE FROM COLLEGE?!?!

The Final Stand!

2007-05-14T10:22:00.000-07:00

Finals for me this week: 3 (Monday, Tuesday and Thursday)

Finals I actually care about: 1 (Monday)

Graduation ceremonies to attend this weekend: 5

Parties and gatherings to attend this weekend: 4

It's all over: Thursday, 6 pm

I'm a graduate of Cal State Fullerton: Saturday, 1 pm

Viva '07!

"This Too Shall Be Made Right"

2007-05-13T01:56:00.002-07:00

We live in a horrifically broken world. Everything decays, all things break down, beauty turns to ugliness and that which is good fades away. Our lots fall to different paths but we all face death as the final enemy, and no one can escape. People are hopelessly wicked, despite what books say, and even nature groans beneath a curse. And the final, terrible nail in the coffin, the deepest and ultimate horror, is that it is all meaningless. This is the way the world has always been, and it is the way the world will always be, until the stars tumble on and the sun expires and all is left to utter darkness.

Unless, of course, we know the whole story.

Christians know that this is not the way the world has always been. It is not the way the world will always be. And because we know the beginning, we know the ending as well.

There is a God who created everything to be beautiful and perfect and good. Man committed cosmic treason of the highest order and brought down a curse upon himself and his whole world. A shroud of sin settled over all that is, seeped into every last nook and cranny of creation and began working toward its ultimate destruction, a disease that would not stop until all was ended. But the God who created is the God who redeems. He did not leave His world to fall to the disease of sin, but He planned from time immemorial how He would rescue His creation and His people. His own Son came to die, but also to live, to show people that there was a better way, that this was not normal, this was not the way things were supposed to be. We see the world around us and assume that death is the sine qua non of life. But Christ came to show us that there is a better day coming--a restoration, when the world shall be set right-side up and His Kingdom and His reign will be everlasting.

For now there is pain. There is brokenness. There is death eating through all things. But those of us who know the whole story can sometimes catch glimpses--short moments of beauty, which shine like a single ray of the sun through an otherwise unbroken blanket of cloud. There is a crack in the world which is ever-widening, which will continue to open until all is swallowed up, not in death but in victory. And the glory of the new world in which all shall be as it truly should be will infinitely outweigh everything in the life we know now.

For now, life is pain, everything is broken and death seems to reign over all. But fear not, my friends. This too shall be made right.

While You're Waiting For That Review...

2007-05-06T23:48:00.000-07:00

... why don't you head on over to Picasa Web Albums and check out pictures from the first-ever LA Metro Campus Crusade Prom? I managed to take some pictures with a really cute girl, and for once some of the pictures of me are half-decent. (It must be her.) Check out the album here:

Campus Crusade Prom 5.4.07

And I'll have the review up in the next couple of days.

P.S. Always support Google. It's like the Mac of the internet.

A Preview of Things To Come....

2007-05-02T23:32:00.000-07:00

Look for my review of Derek Webb's new album The Ringing Bell, which will appear **right here!** in a few short days. In the meantime:

Check out DW's official site here.

Check out his fan site here.

Check out the official site for The Ringing Bell here, where you can order the CD, as well as order the "deluxe" edition which includes a graphic novel (what the heck...) and an immediate digital download of the record.

And if you haven't read my post below, read it.

A Short Lesson In Etymology; Or, Why The NAACP Needs To Study Greek

2007-05-01T00:48:00.001-07:00

From the news story at www.msn.com, specifically this article:

"The NAACP held a symbolic funeral in Detroit 63 years ago for Jim Crow.

"The civil rights organization will do the same this summer for the 'N' word, the Rev. Wendell Anthony said Sunday.

"Anthony, president of the civil rights organization's Detroit branch, said members and supporters of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People will conduct services and a 'eulogy' for the racial slur. The mock funeral will be held during the NAACP national convention July 7-12 in Detroit, he said."

≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈

Anybody care to enlighten these people as to what a "eulogy" is? Let me take a crack at it:

The word comes from two Greek roots: "eu," meaning "good" (reference this page and consult the third table), and "logos," meaning "word" or "speech" (the third table on this page). Thus a "eulogy" is a good word or good speech, and is generally used to denote a speech at a funeral lauding the person who has passed away and encouraging fond remembrance.

Ah yes, let's all celebrate and remember the good times we've had with the "N-word." So sad that it's gone. But at least it's in a better place.

College Graduation is a Remarkable Phenomenon

2007-04-25T14:38:00.000-07:00

Interesting things start happening to you when you're about to graduate.

1. Whenever anyone starts talking about classes or plans for "next semester," your mind immediately zones out.

2. The only reason you have for looking at a Fall 2007 class schedule is to see if one of your graphic-design-major friends designed it.

3. When you see banners on campus that say "Congratulations Graduates," you smile and say, "Thank you!"

(Interactive post: Any interesting graduation phenomena of your own? Post a comment!)

Hooray!

2007-04-04T02:42:00.000-07:00

My iPod lives again!

(Which is more than I can say for myself, tomorrow... since I need to wake up in 3 hours for my composition lesson.)

Help!

2007-04-03T01:58:00.000-07:00

My iPod Nano is sick! And I won't have time to take it to the Mac store before Wednesday! How will I ever survive at work without Knut Nystedt, Dave Matthews, John Corigliano and R.C. Sproul??!!!

Of Teams America, Islam and the Notable Absence of Pork

2007-03-29T17:46:00.000-07:00

N.B. In the interests of cross-referencing, I was going to include a link to M-bito's post about the road trip in the first sentence. But apparently his archives aren't functioning correctly, so you'll have to do without. But if you don't know about the road trip by now, then you either aren't functioning correctly or you haven't been reading my blog. Both of which are serious problems in need of immediate remedy.

As the road trip grows ever closer, the four of us (Mike, Courtney, Eleanor and I) have been confirmed as the official four members of "Team America." Recently, at a Team America hangout that included church, alcohol for everyone but me and buffalo wings, we also confirmed the existence of all the miniature cross-teams that exist within the team (e.g. Eleanor and I, Mike and Eleanor, etc.). The others will be subjects for future posts, maybe; the only ones that matter to this story are Team Guys (Mike and I) and Team Girls (Courtney and Eleanor). Now, we all know how competitive Mike can get. And how competitive Courtney can get. And how competitive Guys and Girls get against each other. But this is really just a small part of our story.

On Orangethorpe, right around the corner from our apartment, is a very interesting restaurant. This is the sign that Mike and I pass almost every day:

Ever since I moved in, Mike and I had been drawing up plans to visit this restaurant, either 1) wearing tan shorts, sandals and white wifebeaters, looking as white trash as possible or 2) wearing as much Christian paraphernalia as possible, both of which scenarios were designed to see how many people we could offend. But we never got around to it... until now.

We made plans to go there for the "Special Lunch" (not the "Lunch Special") on Wednesday. Courtney learned of this, however, a few days ago, and in the friendly nature of vicious to-the-death competition, declared that Team Girls would go for breakfast, just so that they could beat us. But their evil plans were foiled by the unforeseen fact (planned months in advance) that Eleanor was spending the week in Oregon, so she was unable to attend breakfast that day. So, in short, Team Guys won. Boo-yah.

We did indeed go to lunch on Wednesday, although we abandoned our previous ideas concerning dress code. As proof I present:

and:

We noticed that the cars in the parking lot didn't look too unusual. Part of us was glad that we wouldn't be entirely out of place, and part of us was disappointed that Islam doesn't have the same hokey bumper-sticker obsession that Christianity has. We walked up to the door, and decried this inscription above it:

We ignored the fact that this probably said "Abandon hope, all ye who enter here" in Arabic and went in.

We had surmised long ago that the reason it was called a "Chinese Islamic" restaurant was that it served Chinese food according to Islamic dietary laws. And as we surveyed the menus we received that seemed to be an accurate guess, as there were no pork items to be found anywhere. I noticed, as well, that the décor of the place was distinctly Islamic as well (at least, as best I understood it): lots of ornamentation, but all abstract, with no artistic representations of anything living, man or animal. Even the fountain in the entryway was rather plain. I also noticed, however, that there were pictures of fish on the menus, which seemed to me to be cheating.

(The menus, interestingly enough, were headed with the declaration "Lunch Special." Apparently someone missed the discrepancy between the menu and the sign. Heads are gonna roll now....)

The food was actually very good, however, for a reasonable price. I had black pepper shrimp with mushrooms, while Mike opted for the beef and broccoli. Plus the Special Lunch Specialty For Lunch Because You're Special was served with soup, tea, an eggroll and steamed rice. Mike and I had a good conversation, encompassing the Bible, girls and lots of really manly stuff. And I think we made it out without offending anyone. (Curses.)

So, the morals of the story:

1. Guys always w... um, never mind.

2. You should learn to read Arabic.

3. The first person to open a "Chinese Christian" restaurant across the street, full of statues, paintings, icons and bumper stickers, wins.

I'll Produce This Da[r]n Recital If It's The Last Thing I Do...

2007-03-23T21:30:00.000-07:00

... and it very well may be. In the last hour and a half I sent 11 separate emails and made a few phone calls trying to coordinate all my performers and find some other ones (still looking for a clarinetist and a string quartet; anybody know anybody?). This blasted thing is consuming my whole life.

Hopefully a new post will be forthcoming within a few days; thank God for spring break.

I Miss Miss(issippi)

2007-03-06T11:41:00.000-08:00

The landlord who owns the building Assurant rents in which I work (in Tustin) is overseeing extensive remodeling to make the building more attractive to potential renters. When I went in to work yesterday, the break room was getting an extreme makeover; the refrigerator, microwaves, plastic utensils, coffee, etc. had been moved out of the "kitchen" area into the other half of the room with the tables, and everything except the clock had been removed from the walls of the "table" area. When I went down to the room to eat lunch at 6:15, one of the remodelers was eating as well. He finished, and proceeded to go back to work. With a drywall mud pan and implement in hand, he hammered some brackets so they were flush with the wall, then proceeded to mud over them.

Lindsay, Michelle, Tom, Kelsey/Adrian and I spent two days at a house in Mississippi "mudding" drywall, as we called it. It was time-consuming but fun; and then depressing, when we literally had an old pro come and show us how it was done.

On my lunch break yesterday, I was supposed to be studying for a biology exam; instead, I ended up watching a construction worker mud the walls of the break room.

"At The Face Of A Majestic Night"

2007-02-23T01:18:00.000-08:00

(N.B. I conceived the idea for this short bit of prose while walking by myself tonight. No similarity to actual persons, events, or recent dating relationships should be inferred. Honestly.)
(Mad props to the first commenter who can tell me what "N.B." stands for and what it means.)

He paused. The wind tousled his hair and gently caressed his face with the soft-falling rain. The leafed trees rustled amongst themselves and bowed respectfully as he passed, while the bare ones stood solemnly erect. The clouds, catching the light from the city below, reflected it back and created a glowing halo around the vast sky.

But he saw none of it; he thought only of her. He missed her, deeply and painfully. Somehow, without her, all of the night's beauty meant nothing.

He walked on.

Things I've Been Learning

2007-02-21T01:00:00.000-08:00

With God, it's all or nothing. There can be no middle ground for His servants, His children. Over and over Scripture speaks of our God as a "jealous God;" this simply means that He loves us so fiercely that He will admit no other lover to capture the enchantment or the affections of His Beloved. Our allegiance cannot be divided. We cannot serve both God and Mammon; we cannot serve both God and Sex. We cannot serve both God and Religion, nor God and Campus Crusade or a church or (heaven forbid) a fellow man. He must consume all our affections, and all our other loves must flow from that inexhaustible Source.

God also admits no bargains. I've said to Him in the past, "You have to prove to me that what You have for me is better than what I can make for myself, or what this or that can offer me!" But it did not take me long to realize the folly of this. I am a child of the King, called by the King Himself; I have no choice but to offer Him everything. (Even my non-Calvinist friends will agree with this, I think....) I do not have the option of choosing between God and something else, based on the benefits that either will afford me. The choice has already been made: I have been chosen since before the foundations of the world to be holy and blameless before Him. All that remains to me is to embrace His choice. The choice was His, not mine.

And for that, I should be so eternally grateful that I should never rise from my knees.

Welcome To Life As A Composer

2007-02-18T01:34:00.000-08:00

"Whatever you are, be a good one." - Abraham Lincoln

Today was the most intense workday I've probably ever had as a composer. One of the pieces I'm putting on my composition recital on April 20th is a large ensemble work for 10 performers. The piece wasn't finished yet, so I dedicated this weekend to hardcore composing so that I could finish it, and then finish getting my student players and start rehearsing sometime next week.

I got a late start, and I had to take care of some other stuff in the late morning/early afternoon. So I got to school (as I required a practice room, for the keyboard) and started composing around 3:30. As I later explained to Mike and Eleanor, when I set aside time for composing like that, I get really intense about it--I focus all my attention exclusively on the music, and I hardly take any breaks (even when I stop to take a bathroom break, my mind is still intensely focused on the piece I'm working on). I worked like that for 3 solid hours, until 6:30, at which point I was completely mentally burned out. I drove back to the apartment, ate some dinner, watched part of a video with Mike and met two of his friends who came over. Then I knew I needed to get back to work. I've discovered in the past that I tend to work better when someone else is around--even if we're not interacting; for example, if I'm composing and they're studying. So I called Eleanor, and headed over to her apartment, since her roommate Andrea has a full-size keyboard that she allows me to use. I got there around 8:30 and started working around 9; then with a 15 minute break to talk to Eleanor before she went to sleep, I finished around 1:15 a.m.

So I worked for a total of about 7 hours today. In that 7 hours, I wrote about 60 measures of the piece (keep in mind that each measure contains parts for 10 different instruments). This equates to approximately 4 minutes' worth of music. So it took me 7 hours to write 4 minutes. Which is actually pretty much par for the course; professional film composers (like John Williams or Danny Elfman) usually write between 3 and 5 minutes of music in a typical workday.

The remaining 3 minutes of the piece should be easier, as I'm reprising much of the material from the first two sections. I figure another 3 to 4 hours tomorrow afternoon and I should be able to finish it. If that's correct, then all told I will have spent about 18 hours composing a 10-minute piece. Add to that the time I'll spend putting it into the computer and formatting the score, and I will have spent about 25 hours on it.

Welcome to my world.

More Thoughts On Being A Composer

2007-02-10T22:13:00.000-08:00

(Click here for the earlier thoughts.)

At my composition lesson this week, Dr. Walicki and I were talking philosophy of music. He said to me, "Any idiot can come up with something, throw some notes together and say 'This sounds cool.' So what do you do as a composer? What makes you different?"

I thought about it and tentatively offered, "Putting it together? Architecture?" He nodded and said "Exactly."

Anyone can "write music" for themselves, and even write something that's half-decently good. But it takes a true composer to know how and why it works and to understand how to put it together, to understand what materials you're working with and how to use them to create something bigger. Brahms based the entire first movement of his Fourth Symphony on the motive of a falling major third. A whole movement. And (despite the fact that I hate Brahms) it's extremely well-written music.

I also recently read on Greg Wilbur's blog the following interesting thought: "The cultural mandate to take dominion over and subdue the earth [Genesis 1:26-28] has direct application to the arts. Music, poetry, literature, dance, painting, sculpture, etc. are manifestations of dominion over sound, time, language, movement, color, etc."

Prior to his stepping down from his day-to-day role at the company, Bill Gates' title at Microsoft was "Chief Software Architect" (he's now officially the "Chairman"--what a lame change).

From now on, I'd like to be addressed as "Chief Sound Architect," if that's alright with y'all.

P.S. If you want to experience some great sound architecture, save the date: Friday, April 20th, 2007 at 8 pm. My life at CSUF comes to its culmination at this point--it's my senior composition recital: a full recital (probably about 90 minutes) comprised entirely of my compositions, performed by students in the Recital Hall in the Performing Arts building on campus. Think about it: Where else will you get to experience a piano suite of dances that imitates four major twentieth-century composers; a song cycle for two sopranos and guitar, consisting of birds talking about themselves in the first person; a small orchestra describing a night sky; and a string quartet sounding like a rock band? Plus it's free! Seriously, how could you possibly miss this?

3:53 A.M. Is Even Later Than 3:33

2007-01-30T03:53:00.000-08:00

But I have a much better reason this time.

I just finished Angels and Demons. The last 200 pages. In the last 3 hours.

Jessica Rowley told me that when she had read Angels and Demons, after a while she was able to forget the writing style because she was so engrossed in the story. I thought at the time that I wouldn't be capable of such oversight, even unintentionally.

But I suppose I was, more or less, wrong. To protect myself from the inevitable gloating from people like C-Pat, I wasn't fully unaware of it--I was reminded of the melodrama at the end of each and every one of the final 46 chapters. But the story, while not always executed well, was brilliantly crafted and I was entirely mesmerized.

I may need to take a break for a while; don't know if I could start The Da Vinci Code right away. I might need some Winnie-The-Pooh or something to clear my head.

But for now, I just need some sleep.

A Quick Post, For Now (More Exciting Stuff To Come Later)

2007-01-27T00:30:00.000-08:00

I'm sorry. Did I say 2000 songs and 8.5 gigs when referring to my iTunes importing?

Correction: 2500 songs and 10 gigs. Ugh.

But now it's finally over! The last of my Vladimir-Ashkenazy-plays-all-the-Beethoven-sonatas CDs (a 10-disc set) has been imported, and my iTunes library, as defined by "every blasted CD that I own," is now complete. I also bought a new 100-CD wallet at Target this evening, since the two 48-CD wallets that I had were overstocked thanks to the nine new CDs I got for Christmas (plus two extra ones given to me by Mom and Uncle Ted, and two U2 CDs I bought myself with gift cards). So now all my CDs have been rearranged, and apart from 1) my comprehensive Beethoven sonata collection just mentioned, 2) my comprehensive András-Schiff-plays-the-whole-Bach-Well-Tempered-Clavier-(both-books)-CDs (a 4-disc set), and 3) some random CDs that I got for free and don't care about, my entire CD collection fits into the 3 wallets, which means I can now take everything in my car. Although I can never really listen to classical music in the car; it has a much wider range of sound frequencies and volume than rock/pop music does, and the subtleties are lost in the ambient noise which is so plentiful on the road. But at least it's much more organized, and more easily stored and transported. (The J in me is very happy.)

In other news, I'm currently more than halfway through Angels and Demons, the prequel to The Da Vinci Code. My dad, who was kind enough to loan me both books knowing he wouldn't get them back for years, told me that it was better to read Angels and Demons first, so I'm doing that. My opinion of the book is divided. Dan Brown has an excellent mind for details and for storylines--the plot is very exciting and quite thrilling. I really like the fact that the story unfolds in real time, and I'm finding that I can't put the book down. However, he doesn't have quite such an excellent mind for the actual writing. His writing style is pretty weak: he tells much more often than he shows, his characters aren't always believable (you would think that, at some point, Langdon would get used to the crazy things that are happening and his jaw wouldn't drop for the ten thousandth time in disbelief), and he's EXTREMELY melodramatic--every chapter (the chapters range from two to maybe eight pages apiece) ends with a "dun-dun-DUN!" cliffhanger.

So, the tip of the day from AJ is: Get Dan Brown a ghostwriter. That way, he could dream up storylines and do what he does best, while leaving the actual writing to someone a little more qualified.

The most ridiculous quote of the day is: "Dan Brown has to be one of the best, smartest, and most accomplished writers in the country" (Nelson DeMille; laudatory quote on the back cover of Angels and Demons). Obviously Mr. DeMille doesn't read too much. He should meet my brother.

I can't stop laughing.

2007-01-23T00:19:00.000-08:00

My brother is a genius.

3:33. That's Right. A.M.

2007-01-18T03:33:00.000-08:00

Why do I do this to myself?

Over Christmas break I did a clean sweep erasure of everything on my computer, to remove clutter and (hopefully) to speed up general operations. Stupidly, I failed to back up my iTunes library, even though I could have done so. And thus I'm spending hours upon hours upon days of my life importing all 2000 songs and 8.5 gigs that I had on there before. You would not BELIEVE how long it's taking. And I want to finish it before school starts again on Monday. So I'm staying up until ridiculous and ungodly hours of the morning to do so. On Monday night (past), I stayed up until 5:30, catching up on emails but mainly just importing CDs. I do believe (as I remarked to Eleanor) that that's the lamest reason I've ever had for staying up that late.

Now I am to the stage where all I have left are my classical CDs. Which take far longer to import than anything else, 1) because each track is usually longer than on a non-classical CD and 2) because I'm much more picky about the titles of tracks and the artists; it gets much more complicated when you have a composer and a performer involved. Not to mention that the iTunes CDDB® database is much more inconsistent when it comes to classical music.

(Now everyone probably hates me, because this is the most uninteresting blog post ever. Please don't shoot yourself. I promise, usually I have much better things to say.)

Tonight, however, the importation process has given me the chance to catch up on a bunch of new Crusade folks' blogs which I hitherto have not had an opportunity to check out. So here they are presented for your RSS reading pleasure:

1. Amy Grace's New Blog
As my brother pointed out, since I last linked Amy Grace her blog address has changed. She currently has an entry (the second one, entitled simply "2006") which is a photo blog of the year just passed. Good stuff--the composite picture of her at the end of the entry is worth the price of admission.

2. Merrilee's Blog
Amy Grace's best friend and roommate, and one of my singers for Crusade CSUF. Warning: extremely random.

3. Jessica Rowley's Blog
A new(er) friend from Crusade. Features "Future Post" topics and a "Quote" at the end of each of her entries.

4. Ryan Klement's Blog
My drummer for Crusade CSUF, even though he's from Cal State Long Beach. His blog's sleeping beast inspired a hibernating dragon. (Only 3 or 4 people will get that joke... oh great, now I'm starting to sound like my brother)

5. Ryan Maguire's Blog
The man alternately known as "RYMAC" and "Hardcore." Probably my pick for the best blog of the five. Ryan is a quiet guy, an introvert like me, and I really enjoyed reading his blog posts and catching a glimpse of what goes on beneath the surface.

In other news... I can't believe school starts on Monday. I have so much I want/need to get done before then. Like compose 15 minutes' worth of music which I was supposed to have composed over the break. And now I have about 3 days to do it. Maybe I'll post next time about the pieces I'm in the process of writing; perhaps that will be more interesting.

And in the meantime, if you haven't read my brother's poem that I wrote about below, scroll down to my next entry here and follow the link. Amazing.

An Amazing Poem That You Need To Read

2007-01-16T05:07:00.000-08:00

Read my post here first, and then click this link:

Such A Sea

I've bragged about my brother's literary prowess here before, but with this he's really outdone himself. This poem is incredible. First of all, the subject matter he tackles is profound, but he handles it deftly. Secondly, I really like the structure--the consistent rhyme of the middle two lines of each stanza with the refrain that comes back at intervals. Thirdly, the poem is rhythmic but without being static--the rhythm is flexible and free. Fourthly, his imagery is really powerful. I could go on, but you just need to go read it.

This guy's wise beyond his years.

New Linkage

2006-12-20T22:23:00.000-08:00

Hey folks,
Well, it's about time to revamp the ol' links sidebar again. I deleted two or three blogs that haven't posted in a long time (although there are a few that haven't posted that are still on there, like, for example, Jessica's blog; these are teetering on the brink of destruction). But I've added three new ones, which I recommend you check out:

1. C-Pat's Blog (for those of you who don't know, this is Courtney Patino)
C-Pat is part of "Team America," the group of us who will be going on the best road trip ever next fall (for those of you who don't know, check out M-bito's post on it). She writes amazing posts on serious topics that you should check out (for those of you who don't know, reading serious blog posts is good for your mind).

2. Amy Grace's Blog
Amy Grace is a member of Campus Crusade at CSUF, a theater/directing/radio/TV/film person, and a really cool girl. You should check out her last post, which is an elegy to Merrilee's fish who died (apparently of TB) (for those of you who don't know, TB is an acronym for tuberculosis).

3. DJ's Blog
DJ is another member of Campus Crusade at CSUF, a philosophy/film/videography/guitar person, and a really cool guy. He just started his blog 2 weeks ago, but I've really enjoyed his posts so far--creative and thought-provoking. His second post, "Plea to the Muse," appealed to me especially (for those of you who don't know, the Muses were a group of nine Greek goddesses who governed the arts and sciences).

That's all for now! Feel free to continue offering condolences and/or advice regarding that cute soprano....

P.S. If you still haven't checked out C-Pat's blog despite my glowing review above, you need to go read her latest post, The Journey, right now. It's amazing.

P.P.S. Quote of the week, from my new favorite TV show, House:
Patient: “I just want to die with a little dignity.”
Dr. House: “There’s no such thing. Our bodies break down, sometimes when we’re 90, sometimes before we’re even born, but it always happens and there’s never any dignity in it. I don’t care if you can walk, see, wipe your own ass, it’s always ugly, always. We can live with dignity; we can’t die with it.”

IT'S OVER!!!; wherein, we discover that sopranos shouldn't be allowed to be that cute

2006-12-17T14:05:00.000-08:00

The craziness that was Semester, Fall 2006 has finally ended. My last final was on Thursday at noon, but I had a choir concert on Saturday night, so I felt like school wasn't really over until the concert was over. But now, that too has passed. And now I am granted rest from my labors, for a time. (Minus work, which means that I don't get to go home for Christmas until this Friday night.)

Speaking of the choir concert, it rocked. Basically it was a fundraising dinner put on by the Music Associates, who are a group of nice people (and when I say "a group of nice people" I mean "a group of nice old ladies") who generously support the music department and raise money for lots of scholarships. So we like them. Anyway, they put on a dinner at the TSU for $100 a plate (extra for forks and knives, not to mention food), and then recruited the University Singers and Chamber Choir to perform a "Carol Candlelight" Christmas Choir Concert. It was cool. We did a few Christmas carol sing-alongs; reprised the Gabrieli Jubilate Deo and the Rutter Gloria from our previous concert; sang some creative arrangements of Little Drummer Boy, Silent Night, We Wish You A Merry Christmas, Jingle Bells (this arrangement, because it's called "Jingle, Bells," is known to the choral world as "Jingle Comma Bells"), and Sleigh Ride; the Chamber Choir did their pieces from the last concert (for chorus and guitar) and some jazz tunes; Sean Saclolo and Hanna Kim sang solos which rocked; and then there was The Twelve Days of Christmas, arranged by John Rutter, made crazy by Rob Istad (our illustrious maestro). We acted out the item or action for each day, complete with sopranos doing disco moves on "Nine ladies dancing," altos blowing cheap plastic whistles on "Eleven pipers piping," tenors jumping on "Ten lords a-leaping," and basses squatting to the left and striking muscular poses on "Six geese a-laying." Every time we came to "Four calling birds," a phone which was on a stool next to Rob would ring; the first time, he answered it and said "Hello?", Marie asked "Who is it, Dr. Istad?", and he turned to the audience and said "It's the birds!" "Three French hens" were serviced by three screaming rubber chickens held aloft by two basses and a tenor. And the "partridge in a pear tree" were performed by Joe and Ricky (two low basses), who improvised some crazy moves with a baby tree in a basket and a really stupid-looking bird puppet (respectively). It was a big hit.

Also speaking of the choir concert, I come to the second part of my title....

One of the sopranos caught my attention earlier in the semester. I'm close to the edge of the bass section, and she's on the edge of the soprano section, so when we're in the choir room with its curved risers we're pretty much right across from each other. I thought she was kinda cute, you know. Then the day came when the soloists for a piece we were working on (Ralph Vaughan Williams' Serenade To Music, to be precise) finally sang their solos. This particular soprano had one of these solos, and the first time she sang it--which was the first time I had heard her sing alone--she blew me away. She has a beautiful voice, equally suited to being light and floating and to being robust and powerful. And she's a high soprano, and hit a high A with no trouble at all. In short, this chick's got pipes.

In the concert last night, she had the soprano solo in Michael McGlynn's arrangement of Silent Night. To make things more theatrical (which, I'm realizing, Rob has quite a knack for), while the mezzo and tenor soloists stood on the stage next to Rob with the rest of the choir, she was up on the balcony above everyone, so her voice floated down from on high, as it were (which of course was the desired effect). It was lovely. She was perfectly in tune and had a flawless tone. Sigh.

I was expecting that the choir would be having a Christmas party after the concert, allegedly at Rob's house, because we had talked about some such thing earlier in the semester. But apparently, it never materialized, and so after hanging around in the lobby for a while talking to various groups of people (and for some, drinking champagne provided by the Associates), we dispersed. Yes, I know, I had the whole semester, but I chickened out upon numerous occasions; I was hoping that at the party, I would get a chance to meet and talk to this lovely lady. However, my hopes were dashed and shattered like the champagne glass someone dropped on the expensive polished hardwood floor. (Okay, so that didn't really happen; I just needed a creative analogy.) So, instead, I just came home to an empty apartment (M-bito was down in south county last night) and was left to myself to brood. I was able to find her Myspace page, which was positive on one hand because I found out that she likes Lord of the Rings, Coldplay and Evanescence, and House (one of my newly-discovered favorite TV shows), is in the process of reading classics, more importantly is a Christian, and just as importantly is single. On the other hand, this was a negative thing because now I have the opportunity to obsess over this Myspace page. Perhaps fortunately, I wasn't able to access her "Pics" page, because you have to be a member of Myspace in order to do that. Curses.

Thus, I decided to be smitten with a cute soprano--just AFTER school ends.

Perhaps I should buy my emotions a new datebook.

(Get it? Datebook? If only I could channel my cleverness to actually talk to girls I find attractive.)

Tag? What? Naw, you didn't really touch me, it was just my shirt.

2006-12-11T23:17:00.000-08:00

Apparently, I've been blog tagged by Marge aka Elisabeth aka Bella Voce. And apparently, this means that I need to write 5 things about myself and then tag 5 more people. However, I must confess a little secret of mine....

Come closer....

::whispers:: I hate internet games.

And so, meaning no disrespect to Marge or anyone else who participates in such things, I shall now by way of avoidance provide 5 reasons not to accept this tag.

1. She didn't really get me. Read the title.

2. This tag has gone far too far, far too fast. One day, Marge gets tagged. The next, Rachel, Eleanor, Stephen, Rae, M-bito, and more, are all tagged! This thing spreads quicker than the plague. Thanks to you, Marge, half the internet is now tagged.

3. Violence. Based on reason #2, it's only a matter of time before 1) someone gets jealous that they WEREN'T tagged or 2) someone gets mad that they WERE tagged. And then it's only a matter of time before retaliation begins.

4. The collapse of society. This could occur for two reasons: 1) the violence mentioned in reason #3 escalates to a nation-wide level, or (more likely) 2) Stephen gains too much influence, by virtue of this whole tagging thing, and covertly orchestrates the collapse of society that he desires in order to have the opportunity to build his own society back up again. And yes, this is true. Ask him. He'll tell you.

5. With the impending collapse of society as we know it, there are much more important things we should all be doing instead of blog tagging each other. Like... maybe...

Studying for finals, instead of blogging....

(What's the opposite of tagging 5 more people? It's too easy just not to tag 5 more people. Hmm... I know!)

I now nominate 5 people who must either refute or support my reasons given above for not accepting this tag. The 5 are:
Marge, Stephen, Mike, Courtney Patino and my brother Mark. Argue away!

All Good Things Must Come To An End...

2006-11-27T00:24:00.000-08:00

... even Thanksgiving break. Back to school and work on Monday!

I had a great Thanksgiving. We played it chill--just the four of us: my mom and dad, and my brother and I. Nothing much was going on, so I spent most of Thanksgiving Actual Day (Thursday) writing papers so I'd have more time to just relax over the weekend. We had a terrific dinner (thanks Mom!), with all the usual stuff. But no Bulgarian sauerkraut turkey, since we didn't go over to the Pelevs' this year....

I got to spend some good quality time with the whole fam. My brother and I actually met up with Amy Grace (who is also from Redlands) on Friday to grab some breakfast/lunch at Denny's, and that was cool. I went with Mom and Dad to see the opening of "Scrooge!", the Christmas show at LifeHouse Theater, in which Mark plays about 6 different minor/chorus roles (he's in almost every scene), and he did awesomely, as usual. If you're in the Redlands area, or want to be, he's playing Fred Hollywell on Dec. 9th and 22nd. I'm going back on the 9th... so come with me.

All in all, I got some good work done on papers and conducting studies, but I got to sleep in a lot and rest a lot as well. So it was a good time to relax, refresh, and reload--and now I return to school, guns a-blazin', to go out in a blaze of glory in the last two weeks and finals. Watch out, CSUF--it's the Lone Composer!

(Heigh-ho Sibelius!)

Rockin' the Big Straw

2006-11-22T02:44:00.000-08:00

Thanks to everybody who made it out to the Big Straw to see my show on Friday night! It was really cool--an awesome venue--and Shannon Curtis, Concept6 and I all rocked. The premiere of the new song Who I Am was a success as well--even Shannon (whom I'd never met before) complimented me on it. (Although she didn't sign up on my mailing list... how disappointing. I was the first to sign up on hers.)

If you weren't able to make it out, it's okay. I forgive you. Especially Matt, who had a really good excuse. However... you get a chance to redeem yourself by coming to the Composers Forum at Cal State Fullerton next Thursday, November 30th, to hear my string quartet performed. All the details are on the Shows page of my website.

And speaking of the website, not only have the Shows and News pages been updated, but I've added a brand-new Photo Gallery as well! All the pictures on there right now are older ones, but I'll be uploading ones from the Big Straw soon and hopefully ones from McClain's earlier this year too. So check it out!

I may post again this weekend, since I'll have some time off (::BREATHES HUGE SIGH OF RELIEF::). Have a happy Thanksgiving--and don't forget to thank the turkey. Posthumously.

AJ's Rockin' the House On Friday!

2006-11-12T15:33:00.000-08:00

That's right folks, I'm playing my first show in over six months this Friday night, November 17th, at the Big Straw Café in La Mirada. I'll be preceded (at 8 pm) by Shannon Curtis, who will undoubtedly provide a rocking opening to the evening. I'll go on around 8:30, and I'll be followed by the main event--the one and only Concept6!

Check out my music website (especially the News and Shows pages) for more details. If you want to Mapquest the Big Straw Café, here's the address:

12826 La Mirada Blvd, La Mirada, CA 90638

I'll see you there!

P.S. For a juicy rumor concerning the show, head on over to M-bito's blog and check out my comment on his latest post.

An Election and Its Aftermath

2006-11-09T19:32:00.000-08:00

So, presented here for your reading pleasure (assuming, of course, that it accomplishes its purpose), my reaction to the aftermath of "Election 2006" (or whatever your favorite news station has decided to call it):

1. Mike and I get the autograph we want. Mike made a really good point several days before the election, and it was this: When you graduate from a California State University school (e.g., the one, perhaps, in Fullerton), the governor of that great state (or rather a machine designated for the purpose) puts his John Hancock on your diploma. And so, despite all of Ahnold's liberal leanings in the past few months, we were happy to see that he won reelection. Would you rather have on your college diploma the signature of some Joe Schmo Politico, or the Governator himself?

2. Why of all things does a term from horse racing get used to describe the spoils of electoral victory? So the Democrats ended up winning not only a majority in the House, which is what Mike and I saw when we watched the election results late Tuesday night, but also the majority in the Senate and a majority of state governorships (not counting our great state of Cahleefohnia, as mentioned above). When I went to my conducting class on Wednesday morning, one of the grad students in the class was so excited that she conducted better than she ever had before, and crowed over the "trifecta" that the Democrats had achieved. Wait, I thought they were supposed to be donkeys....

3. No props to the Props. As usual, not only did the candidates I voted for not win, I was defeated in my proposition choices as well. Propositions 1A through 1E all passed, although I have to confess that I voted my own interests in that I did vote for A, B and D--two transportation bills because I hate traffic, and money for schools because I'm a college student (so I'm bequeathing a legacy to those who come after me). I voted no on Prop 83 (because it added to prison populations and spent lots and lots of unnecessary monies), but it passed; I voted yes on Prop 85 (because baby steps to ban abortion are all that are possible at this point), and it did not pass. Thankfully, all of the new tax bills (86 through 89) did not pass, although Mike was still rooting for 89 regarding campaign ads for politicians. And for some really odd reason, Prop 90 got a majority of "nay" votes, although I can't imagine very many people who are outspokenly for abuses of eminent domain. Part of me feels like this proposition was confusing because a yes vote meant no and a no vote meant yes; but part of me is horrified to think that it was so confusing that it actually passed on the wrong side when people meant something else.

4. I already know who I want to vote for in 2008. One of the Senate races that was watched most closely was the one in Pennsylvania, between the Republican incumbent Rick Santorum and the Democratic challenger Bob Casey (Jr., I think). It was a hotly contested election, but in the end Casey came out on top. Mike and I, as we were flipping back and forth between channels on Tuesday night, came upon Santorum's concession speech from his campaign headquarters. Now, I'd heard his name before and I was aware of the race; but I had never really seen him speak before. And I was blown away. It was the classiest and most heartfelt concession speech I could imagine from a man who seemed to radiate integrity to his core. The first thing he said was that he had called Casey to congratulate him, and talked about how he would do a great job for the people of Pennsylvania, and said (to all his supporters there) "Let's give him a round of applause." It started very slow and half-heartedly, and he insisted "Come on, give it up, give him a round of applause!" Through the whole speech he was gracious and conceded his defeat with dignity, not rescinding a word of what he had said during the campaign while supporting his opponent in his new role. (You can watch a YouTube video of his speech here.) I asked Mike afterwards if Santorum was a possibility for a Republican presidential candidate in 2008, and he said yes; so on the off chance Santorum or one of his supporters reads this, I say with gusto, Go for it! He'd get my vote, at least.

It's That Time Of Year Again...

2006-10-31T00:55:00.000-08:00

...when vicious glossy ads start coming in the mail, the TV is filled with commercials sporting deep-voiced men warning you about the apocalypse to come, and the annoying people show up on campus asking every person who passes by, "You registered? You registered? You registered???"

Yes, folks, once again the election season is upon us. In one week a (regrettably) very small and rather uninformed percentage of the American population will go to the polls of the greatest free country in the world to choose the leaders of that country for the next two to six years. Are we scared at all yet?

If I ever get my official voter's guide in the mail, and find out where the heck my polling place is, I will (probably have to ditch class to) vote on November 7th. I'm not a very political kind of guy, but I think it's important that everyone who can vote, should vote--as a citizen and as a Christian.

My friends have had interesting various and sundry reactions to this year's election season. One of my friends is not even sure which county she's registered in. One of my friends registered right when she turned 18, then moved to a different state and has yet to vote in any election (she's now 21). One of my friends, as a protest against how much politics has turned into a game, has half-jokingly resolved not to vote for the candidate with the best principles or policies, but the candidate with the most charisma, the best persuasion abilities and the slickest-looking ads.

So what's a Christian to do? What do y'all think? Let's get another lively discussion going on here again, it's been too long....

And in the meantime, I think we'd all do well to remember DW's words on the subject:

My first allegiance is not to a flag, a country or a man
No, my first allegiance is not to democracy, or blood
It's to a King and a Kingdom....

A High Calling

2006-10-12T01:02:00.000-07:00

Being a composer is the highest calling to which a musician can aspire. Performers, historians, theoreticians, educators--none of these would exist were it not for composers. And the composer must be well-versed and competent in all of these areas. He brings together all elements to create a work of art, which is then performed or interpreted or analyzed by others. If it is the task of such musicians, as is often said, to be servants of the music, it is the composer who is the master.

I no longer question, as I did when I was younger, that this is the calling to which I have been called. But I sometimes do question my ability to fulfill it in a worthy manner.

The Matrix Has You, Post #69: In Which We Read A Movie Review And Discover Why Gratuitous Sex Scenes Are Ridiculous

2006-10-04T02:50:00.000-07:00

This past Sunday I had the opportunity to go back to Redlands and hang with the fam. As part of said hanging with fam, three-fourths of the fam (specifically my brother, my dad and I) went to go see the new movie The Illusionist. (Lest anyone stumble into the blunder I committed, this movie should not be confused with The Prestige, which has a similar type of story, coming out later this month. The Illusionist does NOT star Hugh Jackman, Christian Bale or Michael Caine, and was NOT directed by Christopher Nolan. Alas.)

I really enjoyed the movie. The story was very good and deliberately but not slowly paced, the acting was also very good (except for Rufus Sewell as Leopold, which I didn’t care for), the cinematography was excellent and the music (by Phillip Glass; go minimalism) was very fitting, if not entirely to my taste. The surprise twist at the end, in the tradition of a Christopher Nolan or M. Night Shyamalan film, was quite surprising but beautifully understated. Paul Giamatti, in a quite different performance than the last time I saw him (in Shymalan’s Lady In The Water), makes for a great chief inspector torn between respect for Eisenheim the illusionist and loyalty to the corrupt Crown Prince Leopold. Jessica Biel isn’t as attractive as I’d like her to be for the role of the princess, but she serves. And, let’s face it: You’ve just gotta love Edward Norton. As soon as you see him, you start rooting for him. Especially when he’s an awesome magician and dresses in sweet Victorian-era black clothes, complete with gloves, a cape and a hat. If only I was cool enough to dress like that.

However, I felt like it was a good movie that could have been a great movie with better execution. As already mentioned, I wasn’t too impressed with Sewell’s or Biel’s performances. I would also have liked to have seen more tricks because, let’s face it, everybody likes to watch magic tricks. But my main beef with the movie was its inclusion of a gratuitous sex scene between Eisenheim and Sophie (Biel’s princess character) near the beginning (they were childhood friends who reunite after a long separation and discover they still love each other).

Now, apart from the fact that I’m usually against sex scenes in general, this one bugged me on several levels. First of all, due to the moral problems of such things, the scene almost destroyed my respect for Eisenheim’s character, which up until that point had been very high. Secondly, it was a stupid thing for them to do in the context of the story. Sophie is soon to be married to the Crown Prince, who guards her jealously. After the sex scene, Eisenheim suggests that they run away together where the prince could never find them. This is not a smart idea. “Let’s have sex first, and give the secret police a chance to catch us, and THEN try to run away! It’s too boring to run away first (and then possibly get married or something old-fashioned like that) and THEN have sex.”

However, my biggest problem with the sex scene was that it was gratuitous, and thanks to a revelation I had while thinking about this tonight I now realize why. My brother trainly pointed out that the purpose of the scene was to establish that they still loved each other after being separated for so long; but he also noted that there were much better (and less morally wrong) ways to show this in the movie. This prompted my thinking, which was on a slightly more general level.

A quick discussion of aesthetics will suffice to make my point. Within any given work of art, be it a musical composition, a book, a painting, or a film, all of the materials must relate to the structure of the whole in order to create a work of art with integrity. Every note, every phrase, every word, every brushstroke, every character, and every plot point must have a purpose that relates to the whole. This ensures that the work of art will be coherent and unified in regards to its structure, motives and materials. Anything which is extraneous, then—which cannot be shown to have a purpose relating to the overall structure—is unnecessary, and therefore aesthetically bad.

The sex scene in The Illusionist, although it served to advance the plot, could have been done in better ways which render the sex itself unnecessary. Thus, this or any gratuitous sex scene, by the very nature of its gratuitousness, is an aesthetic flaw, and decreases the overall value of the work of art.

Ridiculous.

The Assurant Committee Whose Job Is To Make Employees Happy Is At It Again!

2006-10-03T00:07:00.000-07:00

(I hope you guys aren't getting bored with my multitudinous posts about work. I really don't intend to write so much about it, but they give me so much material it's hard to resist.)

First of all, last week they emphasized and reminded us of the ICUE program. This is a program that recognizes and rewards associates who go above and beyond expectations in living out the company's corporate values of Integrity, Change, Urgency and Excellence. In order to help us with this, they gave us a tangible visual reminder which should be fun too.

They say that work is like your home away from home, right? Well, they just made it easier for me. They gave us...

ASSURANT ICUE MAGNETIC POETRY!!!

(I know you can't read it; this is just to give the wide-angle view. I took the pictures with my phone, again. The big magnet in the upper right corner is my name--I thought I might steal it and bring it home to put on our fridge.)

(A closer look....)

These people either know me really well, or don't know me nearly well enough. They may know me really well, in that I love magnetic poetry. They may not know me enough, because I'll never get any work done now.... (I arranged all the words they gave me into sentences in about 8 minutes.)

Oh yeah, just for kicks, they gave us an ICUE cookie too.

Then today. This week is "Assurant's 2006 Customer Service Week: A full week to show our appreciation to all the hard working employees in Customer Service." So... why I'm involved in this, I don't know. I don't deal with customers, much less service them, in any way. But I get to enjoy the perks. Not that I'm complaining....

So, true to form, we each had a Customer Service Week packet on our desks today. (We also got an email which told us to feel free to dress casually [i.e. T-shirt and jeans] for the whole week. I find it ironic that the reason we can dress casually at all, much less for a whole week, is because we don't deal with customers.) The packet contained a full-page flyer with the heading I quoted above, explaining the focus of each day and which Assurant locations were participating. It also included a smaller (maybe 3x6) flyer which they must have got at some sort of Hallmark store. On one side, with a cutesy cartoonish picture of an underwater scene with, of all things, a butterfly net, it proclaims in large, bubbly letters, "Caught Giving Above and Beyond Service." On the other side, it says "Thanks! For Being So 'Fin'-tastic With Customers." Then a number of the cheesiest puns ever follow, each differentiated as a bullet point with a different-colored fish:

- Your dedication makes a big splash around here.
- You dive into every task with enthusiasm.
- Your attention to customers is clear to "sea."
- We're hooked on your great attitude.
- Your commitment to great service makes a whale of a difference.
- We think you're a great catch!

Also in the package were snacks: a snack-sized packet of Goldfish crackers (Kati3 will be sorry she missed this--she brought Goldfish almost every day during training); a packet containing two "Giant Goldfish Grahams" (?); and one (count 'em, one) Swedish fish, individually wrapped. (Click here if you don't know what a Swedish fish is.)

They also gave us bagels (with cream cheese!) and orange juice today, just because we, um, deliver such great service to our customers! (Shh... don't tell them we don't actually deal with customers. More free stuff, plus drawings, games and prizes are still to come this week. Can data entry get any cooler than this?)

The Matrix Has You Turns 1!

2006-09-23T23:42:00.000-07:00

(Treat yourself to some cake and ice cream! . . . Yeah, yourself. What, you think a starving college student like me can afford to buy treats for all his readers?)

Today, September 23, is the first anniversary of my blog. (In case you’ve forgotten it, you can read my first post here). In honor of the occasion, I’d thought I’d grace you all with the post that I planned on doing early on but never actually wrote. So here it is.

“It’s the question that drives us, Neo. It’s the question that brought you here. You know the question, just as I did.”
“What is the Matrix?”

“The Matrix is everywhere. It is all around us—even now, in this very room. You can see it when you look out your window, or when you turn on your television. You can feel it when you go to work, when you go to church, when you pay your taxes. It is the world that has been pulled over your eyes to blind you from the truth.”

The Matrix is a computer-generated dreamworld, a digital construct, designed to enslave humans to the artificially intelligent machines who need them to survive. The Matrix allows them to feel as if they are truly living, when in the real world, their bodies are kept in tanks from which the machines draw energy. The Matrix is a world which seems real, which has connections to the real world (if you die in the Matrix, you die in the real world as well), but which is in itself an illusion which hides what is truly real.

The Matrix (the movie) has some of the most pervasive and powerful Christian symbolism that I’ve ever seen in a film. (The story I always like to tell is that when my father first watched the movie, at the end he realized how much symbolism it contained, and immediately watched it all the way through again and took notes.) If I went into all the detail I could, this post would start to rival the size of Mark’s posts; but I’ll content myself with the main point, from which I derive the title of this blog.

Trinity hacks Neo’s computer in the beginning of the movie, warning him, “The Matrix has you,” and drawing him to the party where they have the first dialogue exchange I quoted above. When Neo first meets Morpheus, the latter explains the Matrix in the second quote.

The premise of the movie is that what we see is not what we get. There is more to this life than what our five senses can experience. There is a reality, outside our normal everyday experience, which is more real than the world we see. In this true reality, there is an epic war being fought.

And this is, of course, entirely true.

Whether or not the Brothers Wachowski intended it this way, the Matrix functions as an analogy for the physical world we experience; the “real world” of the movie stands for the spiritual realm. Although we often lose sight of the fact, the spiritual world is indeed more real, and far more important, than the physical world we experience, and there is indeed an epic war being fought. The people who are unaware of the real world are kept harmlessly in their tanks where they are not even aware of the battle, much less able to choose sides and fight; in the same way, people who are unaware of the reality of the spiritual world are spiritually harmless and no threat to the enemy, and are in perilous danger. And thus it is the task of the freed ones to free as many others as possible, to spread the joy of the true life that they have found, and to gather warriors for the fight, although they know that it has already been won by One much stronger than they (John 16:33). “For though we walk in the flesh, we are not waging war according to the flesh. For the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh but have divine power to destroy strongholds” (2 Corinthians 10:3-4). We live in the world; but we are not of it.

It is of paramount importance that the Christian be at all times mindful of the “real world,” and be armed and prepared for the battle. Someone who has lost this not only has a dangerously narrow perspective, but is also neutralized—the enemy need not worry about him, for he is no threat. Our Lord calls us to take up the whole armor of God (Ephesians 6:10-20), fight the good fight of faith (1 Timothy 1:18, 6:12), and follow Him to victory (1 John 5:4-5; Revelation 19:11-16, 12:10-11). And in the meantime, we enjoy fellowship and unity with Him; we are called to abide in Him (John 15:1-11), for apart from Him we can do nothing.

Whenever you are burdened under the cares of the world, or get frustrated or caught up overmuch in difficult circumstances, remind yourself, “The Matrix has you.” Be reminded of the overarching reality of the spiritual world, which is actually the infrastructure that holds our physical world together. Be admonished once again to “seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth. For you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God” (Colossians 3:1b-3). Remember that your eyes have been opened, and the veil has been lifted (2 Corinthians 4:3-6), and the truth has set you free (John 8:32).

“For this slight momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison, as we look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen. For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal” (2 Corinthians 5:17-18).

Fun At Work

2006-09-18T23:41:00.000-07:00

(This is a cell phone photo of the office where I work. The cubicles are all behind those heavy wooden forbidding double doors. I have to use a magnetic badge to unlock said doors. It was pretty cool... for about a week.)

Today was the big day! The day that Data Entry, Exception Processing, and, uh... a few other departments were separated into Lender Teams. In layman's terms, this basically means that each processor will only work in 2 or 3 banks, increasing their knowledge, accuracy, efficiency and production. For the occasion, the management busted out mad decorations: colorful signs, balloons (in the company colors, of course--blue, orange and green), and streamers along the sides of the cubicles.

I thought I was an adult working at a respectable company, but I guess I'm just a 4 year old at a birthday party.

Oh, and did I mention that the Lender Teams worked perfectly on their very first day? In order to "clean up the mess," in my boss' terms, I and most of the others worked in, let's see... HSBC, New Century, USCL, OSB, Regions, Sovereign....

I found a few more interesting names and places last week, for your enjoyment:

"22816 East 29th Street Lane Court South" in Blue Springs, Missouri--they couldn't decide on a direction or a street designation, so they just went with them all.

"Annabelle Yee"--could have been a great poem title, if Edgar Allan Poe had been Chinese.

The city of "Amissville, VA"--something's amiss here! If only we knew what it was....

A state motto: "Wild, Wonderful West Virginia"--any state that has to try that hard to come up with an interesting motto can't have much to offer. Do you really think West Virginia is wild and wonderful? Yeah. Me neither.

And finally, the city of "Floydada, TX"--this city wasn't named by its founder, but by the founder's two year old son.

Lastly, allow me a short rant. Despite the fact that I was listed on the HSBC team (it made me laugh when I saw that, since I'm part-time now, everyone else had a "1" by their name and I had a "0.5" by mine), my primary two banks are Regions and Fifth Third. I've gotten used to hearing and saying "Fifth Third Bank" by now, but at first it gave me pause. I actually remember seeing a Fifth Third Bank branch several years ago, driving through Fullerton. I stopped (fortunately I wasn't driving, so, I guess I really didn't stop) and wondered, "What the heck? 'Fifth Third?'" To be truthful, I have no idea why it's called Fifth Third Bank. But it would make sense to me to condense the name for the sake of convenience. For example, if this is the fifth incarnation of Third Bank, you could call it Eighth Bank. Or, if each of the First, Second and Third Banks had gone through five versions, you could call it Fifteenth Bank. Or, if it's a sub-bank which consists of a fifth of all of Third Bank's assets, you could call it Point Six Bank or Six-Tenths Bank, or, um, actually it would be Point Two Bank or One-Fifth Bank. Or perhaps if Fifth Bank was divided into thirds you could call it One And Two-Thirds Bank, or One Point Six Six Six (Ad Infinitum) Bank. Or, you could combine them all (just to be clear, you know) and call it

"Fifth Third Eighth Fifteenth Point Six Six-Tenths Point Two One-Fifth One And Two-Thirds One Point Six Six Six (Ad Infinitum) (Ad Nauseam)..." at which point the entire outside wall of the bank would be covered with numbers and no one would ever realize that what was inside was, in fact, a bank.

Or, you could just spell it with numbers.

And what would happen if it started to grow, perhaps getting more of the market share for banks in general? Fortunately, my already mathed-out brain doesn't have to answer this question, since a cartoonist from the Cincinnati Post has answered it for us. I'll leave you on this note; until next time--bank with Washington Mutual, for Pete's sake.

9.11.01: In Memoriam

2006-09-11T23:30:00.000-07:00

President Bush's Oval Office Speech, 9.11.06 (Video)

President Bush's Oval Office Speech, 9.11.06 (Transcript)

In pace requiescat. Stamus contra malum, Deo vindice. Victoria aut mors!

One More Funny Post

2006-09-02T23:02:00.000-07:00

::Karl Haas voice:: Hello everyone:

Forgive me for being slightly truant as regards my posting lately. I've been rather busy with school and such. As I was thinking about my past posts, I realize that I haven't posted on something serious in a long time. I have several ideas in queue, but for now, here's one more funny post for y'all to enjoy. Since it's been a while since I posted funny names and places I found at work, I have a huge long list of things which currently takes the form of five Post-It notes all posted together on my desk. Oh, plus two more. Plus another one that just has one note on it. Yes, they've been accumulating for a while now. So here they are:

People
"William Ogg"--folks, obviously this man is from the Stone Age. Let's do our best to welcome him into the 21st century.

"Thaddeus Rogozinski"--no one has ever spelled his name correctly. Ever.

Guy's name: "Mohammed Salim." His wife's name: "Sue."

Guy's last name: "Debardelaben." First name: "Joe."

And finally, I found a document on the infamous "James Bond"--apparently he moved to Georgia and settled down with a Bond girl named "Suzanne."

Random Occurences
Most documents have a section called the "Mortgagee Clause" which lists the name of the bank that's lending money and their address. The bank I work in, Regions, is very particular about their mortgagee clauses, and unless it specifically says "Regions Bank DBA Regions Mortgage" we need to send a letter to change it. But one overzealous insurance company went a little too far and put a mortgagee clause on their document that said:

"Regions Bank DBA Regions Mortgage DBA Regions Bank."

Wait a second....

One day a phone rang in an empty cubicle on the other side of mine. A woman with a mildly thick accent replied to the phone, telling it that the woman who inhabited the cubicle was vacationing in the mountains:

"She's not here, she's on top of the mountain! She's like Moses, she's about to receive the Ten Commandments!"

Places
The city of "Paw Paw, Michigan"--Baloo's hometown.

The city of "Effingham, Illinois"--populated by mad cussing people.

The city of "Lincoln Park, Ohio"--hometown of the band Linkin Park, who apparently just ripped off the city's name for their band's and dumbed down the spelling.

The street of "Central Avenue" in "Middletown, Ohio"--people who really like to be the center of attention right in the middle of things live here.

The street of "Talking Rocks Road" in "Reeds Spring, Missouri"--apparently the disciples kept silent here.

Places made up of only certain types of people:
"Cashiers, North Carolina"
"Fingerboard Road" in "Monrovia, Minnesota" (guitarists and string players live here)

A series of similar places:
The street of "Kilkenny Drive" in "Houston, Texas"--is this South Park, or...?
The city of "Kilmichael, Mississippi"--like the previous one, with a different objective.
The city of "Kilgore, Texas"--home of conservatives who voted for Bush in 2000 and burned down movie theaters that showed An Inconvenient Truth.
And the city of "Killen, Alabama"--like all the above but with a conveniently broader application.

And finally, here is the absolute single weirdest address of all time:
"276 E. Inauguration Day
Santa Claus, Indiana"

No, I swear I didn't make that up.

Like I said, a serious post will be forthcoming, probably on Monday--no school, no work! And until then:

"Remember, remember,
The fifth of November,
The gunpowder treason and plot.
I know of no reason
Why the gunpowder treason
Should ever be forgot."

Iron Sharpening Iron

2006-08-27T23:42:00.000-07:00

One of the things I love best about living with Mike is that we hang out in the apartment late, sometimes eat some food, and often get into deep philosophical and theological discussions. Oh, and of course discussions about girls. But I really enjoy them, and I feel like they tend to be very train for both of us. Although we of course share the same faith and the same values, oftentimes our perspectives on issues differ (this is of course natural since I'm an INTJ and he's an ENFP). But more often than not, our differing perspectives don't disagree but rather complement each other, and we're able to see an issue or a question more clearly because we've seen it from two different but agreeing angles. It's awesome. I feel like we're two young college bohemian ideologues, hammering out the way we see the world by bouncing ideas and philosophies off of each other. As Mike said, Plato would be proud of us. As the Bible said, "Iron sharpens iron, and one man sharpens another." Proverbs 27:17 (ESV)

But on a different note, sometimes these discussions can have rather amusing outcomes, or at least some hilarious moments. We were talking a lot about politics tonight, and we returned to a topic we had discussed earlier this summer about the idea of a monarchy. Mike was talking about how ideally, a monarchy is the best form of government, because the authority which is granted by the people is centered and centralized in one person, and there's no doubt about who's in control--Plato's ideal of a philosopher-king. I reiterated my point from our previous discussion, which was that although that works in theory, and a perfectly good person would make a perfectly good ruler, there are obviously no perfectly good people, and that's where the philosopher-king concept falls apart. People are imperfect and infallible, and as that one famous guy said, "Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely." (Apparently, in the same vein, the same guy also said, "The danger is not that a particular class is unfit to govern. Every class is unfit to govern.") Which prompted Mike to concoct the following brilliant equation:

"Imperfect people plus power equals crap."

Another hilarious moment actually preceded our discussion, but I enjoyed it so much that I have to record it as well. We were sitting at the table in our living/dining room, and Mike noted that one of the lights in the ceiling fan above the table was out. I hadn't noticed this, so I reached up and unscrewed the light bulb to find that one of the filaments had broken so the light wasn't working. I asked Mike if he had any light bulbs of a similar shape (since it was one of those fancy, pointy light bulbs), and he replied, no, they had come with the apartment and been here when he moved in. So he suggested we complain to the management.

Me: So we can go out and buy a light bulb that looks like this....
Mike: ...or we can go raise bloody hell down there.

Hmm....

The CSUF Rock Star Returns

2006-08-24T20:36:00.000-07:00

Sorry folks; I know you've all been horribly disappointed that I haven't blogged recently. This past week has been the first week of school, and between said school, still working part-time (or not working, but part-time, as it so happens), and crazy Crusadeness things have been a little hectic. But now here on Thursday night I find a few stray moments to at least let you know that I'm still here. Aren't you happy? I'll probably post a real update/post sometime over the weekend or next week. For now, do three things:

1. Head over to Marge's mom's blog, Fun With Blanks, and fill out the latest blank there. Really cool.

2. Head over to His Holiness the Pope's blog, Ask The Pope, since he's returned from his long absence.

3. Enjoy these random quotes from my teachers this week:

"We're going to focus on the messy stuff." - Dr. Madsen in Advanced Form and Analysis, commenting on how it's the transitions and not the main themes that are the objects of interest in sonata form

"Look at exercise 'e,' for 'enigma.' It's like our own personal Sesame Street this morning." - Dr. Istad in choral conducting, commenting on how he chose a new word each time he said the letter of an exercise

And speaking of Sesame Street, I recently visited the Homestead apartments wearing my old Campus Crusade shirt with a big 4 on it (it says "Campus Crusade 4 Christ"), and Jessica sagely said:

"Today's program is brought to you by the letter 4!"

Cool New Links--Check 'em Out!

2006-08-13T22:38:00.000-07:00

You guys should be really happy that I keep you up to date on all the coolest blogs around. Where would you ever be without me?

First, my brother Mark has posted his first new "Deep Thought" to his new Xanga, So_Thoughtful. It's about world domination, and a plot he recently discovered to take over the world, so I know that you'll want to read this and inform yourself. It's the least you can do to save yourself from impending destruction. You can click the link on the sidebar, or just click here: It was right under our droopy eyelids the whole time....

Second, Matt has moved to a new site. He used to be "extra_ordinary matt;" but now he's "beyondordinary matt." A newly updated link to the newly updated Matt is on the sidebar, or you can click here.

Third, my good friend Marge, who also went on the Mississippi trip (and who sometimes goes by her given name, Elisabeth), has started a blog that (::glare::) I was completely unaware of until she posted a comment on my last post. She has been added to the sidebar, or you can read the blog at Bella Voce. She's a writer and posts her work on the blog, like Rachel, and I have a feeling that you'll enjoy her stuff.

Fourth, randomly, Marge's mom is a published author, and she created a blog called "Fun With Blanks," which has one of the coolest premises for a blog ever. She writes the first half of a phrase and leaves a blank for the rest of it, and you comment and fill in the blank with whatever you want. It hasn't been updated since May (the first and the last post), but I'm hoping that it will continue because I think that's just freaking awesome. Click on the link to have your own Fun With Blanks.

I feel like I'm about to have an M-bito moment here...

I want to encourage all of you to check out these blogs, read them, and comment, even if you don't know the people. When I posted my story "Breaking A Fall" last month, I got a random comment from one of Stephen's friends that I'd never met before, and that was really cool. Comments on a blog are very encouraging to the blogger, and help to perpetuate regular posting on the blog, which makes everybody happy (read M-bito's sage blogpost about commenting here.) And these people (with the exception of Marge's mom, since I don't know her very well) are good friends of mine, and they have cool stuff to say that you'll enjoy reading. So read, and comment. And everyone will love you for it.

And maybe the next time you read my blog you won't have to deal with ten thousand purple HTML links in each paragraph....

I Know What You're Thinking...

2006-08-10T02:33:00.000-07:00

...you’re thinking, “Hey, AJ’s an amazing musician, and he’s got an opinion about everything, and he’s a great writer too, so why doesn’t he write a review of Jason Mraz’s CD Mr. A-Z and put it on his blog?” Well, my friend, you’re in luck, ‘cause that’s exactly what I’m gonna do.

When Kati3 first gave me the CD to listen to, I was intrigued. I’d never really heard any of Mraz’s music before, but I’d heard a lot about him and knew he was popular. And even before I’d heard the CD, I had thought that the title (Mr. A-Z - you know, from Mraz) was clever. I started listening to “Life Is Wonderful,” the first song, and was not much impressed from the get-go. I wasn’t sure what I thought about his voice, as he had a tendency to over-pronounce “r”s and to skew his pronunciation if the melody line did something unusual. But, on the other hand, I noted happily that he wasn’t afraid to use his falsetto, and actually had a very smooth break and a very strong head voice. (See Chris Martin of Coldplay and Bono of U2 for other singers like this.) But I listened through the CD several times, and as they say it "grew on me." (I hate that phrase, but there aren't any other good phrases that communicate the same thing. If anyone knows of or thinks up one, let me know. Please.)

Mraz's songwriting style is not my favorite. I'm a big fan of subtlety in songwriting, as any of you who have heard my CD will understand; Mraz tends to be more forthcoming and straight out. And there was more sexual innuendo and sexual not-so-innuendo than the typical music I listen to (although, um, I have been listening to Maroon 5 lately... but that's only because of the string quartet! More about this in a later post). And his backing musicians are not the most creative I've heard. I was especially disappointed by the drummer at first, thinking that there was a lot he could have done to add especially detailed touches to several of the songs. However, I do enjoy the fact that Mraz sings in a rap type of style - not speaking, but cramming as many words as possible into a small space with lots of internal rhymes. But the thing that really elevates the CD out of the first circle of the hell of mediocrity is the wide variety of styles that he displays, while keeping a consistent and coherent feel throughout. In addition to the singer-songwriter pop/rock style an unschooled one such as I would expect, he also throws in dashes of punk, hip-hop, funk and Spanish music for extra flavor. And it works, often very well.

The strongest songs on the CD (in my opinion) are "Wordplay," "Geek in the Pink," "Bella Luna" and "Plane." Close behind are "Mr. Curiosity" and "O. Lover," followed by "Life Is Wonderful," "The Forecast" and "Please Don't Tell Her." I was rather unimpressed with "Did You Get My Message?," "Clockwatching" and "Song For A Friend," and I skipped over them in my last few listenings.

"Wordplay" is just a really fun song, and it contains some of his best lyrics and lyrical-musical interactions (like when he says "Pull out the stops—" and everything stops—and then "Got your attention, I guess it's time again for me to mention the wordplay...."). "Geek in the Pink" is also fun, and gets more into the hip-hop and funk sides of things, although its subject matter is a little less innocent than "Wordplay."

And then there's "Bella Luna," which is Kati3's favorite song. "Bella luna," of course, means "beautiful moon" in Spanish, and the song utilizes "the language of all lovers" in comparing his love to the moon, sometimes with creative and sometimes with just weird lyrics. And, in the end, the final score stands at

The Moon: 2 verses
The Girl: 2 verses and 4 choruses

so I guess we know where his loyalties lie. I wasn't sure what I thought of this song at first, but in time I came to enjoy the Spanish flavoring (complete with a nylon guitar solo in the middle) and the lyrics about the girl. Still not sure what I think about the lyrics about the moon; when I first heard it, I was excited because I thought he was going to start speaking in mythological terms and stories, but that didn't happen so I was somewhat disappointed. Instead he talks about cosmic fish and marble dogs. What's that all about.

A few more scattered thoughts before I close out this review, which apparently hasn't done much to prove any of the three original things you were thinking, except that I have an opinion about everything. (Although I have to admit that I personally liked the "first circle of hell" comment earlier. Gotta love the literary allusions.) I like the music to "Plane" a lot, despite the lyrics being more profane than his other songs (although he keeps it biblical) and vague as to whether he loves or hates the girl. The piano ballad "Mr. Curiosity" was a refreshing change of pace, although it contains a middle section where he apparently turns his voice into an opera singer for a while, which is creepy (though not as creepy as the choir in Damien Rice's song "Cold Water," which also sings in the middle of the song and at the end, too) – and it is him because there aren't any other vocals listed. "The Forecast" has some clever lyrics, but more innuendo than most of the other songs. And "Did You Get My Message?," I think, is just really lame.

And a word to the wise young songwriter: When you start the first song on the album, and you're not sure if people will like your voice, your writing or your music that much, it's not a good idea to include the lyric "There is no end to what I'm sayin'...."

A New Link For You To Love

2006-08-08T01:30:00.000-07:00

I was going to go for a longer post tonight, but I want to go to bed relatively early, so I'll save that for tomorrow or Wednesday. For now, I'm going to promote a new blog(ish) site that all of you should check out:

So_Thoughtful - Mark's OTHER Xanga

For those of you who have read Mark's blog, I realize it might be daunting to think of a whole other site of his to read. But this one will be shorter. For those of you who have seen and/or read his "Deep Thoughts" on his blog, this new Xanga is basically going to be reserved for "Deep Thoughts." (Read Mark's first two "DT"s here and here.)

In classic DT format (although, strangely enough, not labeled as such), his first post on So_Thoughtful is entitled "On Cruel and Unusual Punishment," and to shamelessly promote my brother for a moment, it's freaking hilarious. I enjoyed every moment of the saga of Yoshi, Bob, Niko, Nike and Caleb, and you will too.

The second post on So_Thoughtful is a quiz to determine your sensitivity to the Force (from Star Wars, you know). I'm not even going to say that I'm shamelessly going to promote this one. This is, flat-out, one of THE funniest things I've ever read online. And if you know much about Star Wars, you'll catch some of the more veiled references. (Stephen will undoubtedly die laughing.) And, if you've read Ender's Shadow, you'll get one of the funniest answers. Mark gets 10,000 points for how to conquer a planet. Go take the quiz, because if laughter is good for the heart, this will add 20 years to your life.

A Very Good Quote and a Very Bad Quote

2006-08-07T02:22:00.000-07:00

Just a quick post before bed tonight, so I can keep you readers enthralled....

First, the good quote. It was printed in the bulletin in church this morning, and it's from Jonathan Edwards.

"If you are selfish, and make yourself and your own private interests your idol, God will leave you to yourself, and let you promote your own interests as well as you can. But if you do not selfishly seek your own, but do seek the things that are Jesus Christ's, and the things of your fellow-beings, then God will make your interest and happiness His own charge, and He is infinitely more able to provide for and promote it than you are." Way to tell it like it is.

And the bad quote, which was a sticker on the rear window of a van I saw on my drive home from church:

"God is our church."

I didn't see the *non*church or organization that created the sticker, as the van was several lanes to my right, and therefore some of my friends (not to name names, but, like, Jessica) will be happy that I won't get the opportunity to personally lambast them for their idiocy. But this statement displays such profound ignorance and lack of proper theological understanding that I was forced to comment on it. I assume that the statement is intended as one of those anti-denominational anti-establishment anti-tradition-for-the-sake-of-tradition things, which is meant to make people think "Wow! That's so profound! I wish I was that spiritual, that I wouldn't need any of the traditions of an institutionalized church to connect with God." But this is so obviously ludicrous that it troubles me (though it doesn't surprise me) that any true Christian would display this sticker proudly. There is a (very) small grain of truth in it, I suppose, but I'm getting tired of people who say that they're a Christian, and it's just them and Jesus, and they don't need the church. Scripture clearly contradicts this, both implicitly and explicitly by teaching and by example, throughout its entirety. And as for the whole anti-denomination thing, I've said this many times before, that while it is sad that so many divisions have come from trivial and unimportant things and the Church (with a capital "C") needs to unite and work together, there are issues and there is truth that is worth dividing over. Derek Webb (you knew I'd bring him into this, didn't you), in one of his songs, confesses "I repent, I repent / of trading truth for false unity." Compromising truth and valid conviction in order to achieve some sort of vague doctrinal "unity" is, quite simply, wrong. Again, just to clarify, there are most definitely issues which are not worth dividing over which have been, and there is an absolute necessity for the members of the Body of Christ to put aside their differences (not, as I've said, give them up) at times to work for the greater good of the Kingdom. But to say that "God is our church" unnecessarily and oversimply implies that such differences are always wrong and counterproductive. Okay, maybe it doesn't imply that directly, but from my own personal experience, many of the people who have left what they style the "institutionalized church" have often done so for that reason. Plus, it makes some of the metaphors Scripture uses for the Church rather difficult. Wait, Christ marries, uh, Himself? His Bride is really just Him? And a head by itself isn't much good without a body....

::steps off soapbox::

Wait a second, when did I get up there?

Nothing much to say tonight...

2006-08-03T01:24:00.000-07:00

... part of me wonders if it's even worth blogging. But here I go, anyway.

A few more interesting things I came across today at work:

1) The name "Agnes Motton" (which is a wonderfully Dickensian name)

2) The name "Groffery Bambarger" (which sounds like a J.K. Rowling name)

and 3) Someone a few cubicles down from me said to someone else, "Hey, do you want to see an Auschwitz photo?" (part of me can't believe that's what she said, but I could have sworn I heard it that way)

I set another personal record for speed today--actually twice. I was working in Regions, my favorite bank, and I probably processed more than 100 Shelter Mutual Insurance dec pages at around 124 docs per hour, but the numbers were mixed in with several other batches so it wasn't an accurate reading. But no worries--later on I hit a ton of list bills. But these are not annoying list bills, like you might find in OSB or Ameriquest or (save us all) Washington Mutual. These are beautifully clear, easy to read, all-of-them-fit-on-one-page Regions list bills. And I hucked them at 127 docs per hour, towards the end of the night. Ended the day completing 675 docs altogether. (Although why they always come out as round numbers, I couldn't tell you--650, 675....) Good times.

Part of me wants to go read Ender's Shadow, the novel I'm almost halfway through at the moment. (Shameless plug: It's amazing. Read Ender's Game first, and be amazed at one of the greatest stories in science fiction, stand in awe for a little while, then go read Ender's Shadow.) But then another part of me feels like I should sleep tonight, and the rest of me knows that if I start reading I won't be able to stop for a few hours. But... but... maybe just a chapter or two....

Fun At Work + Google Images = A Great Blog Post

2006-08-01T00:02:00.000-07:00

So I came across some more interesting names and places today....

"Nineveh, Indiana," which can soon expect a visit from this guy:

"103 Sleepy Hollow Drive, Alabama," which can soon expect a visit from this guy:

And "James Freeze," who can soon expect a visit from this guy, his long-lost brother:

A Train Illustration From Church This Morning

2006-07-30T12:47:00.000-07:00

A quote from A.W. Tozer that my pastor recorded in the bulletin and brought up in his sermon:

"Has it ever occurred to you that one hundred pianos all tuned to the same fork are automatically tuned to each other? They are of one accord by being tuned, not to each other, but to another standard to which each one must individually bow. So one hundred worshipers met together, each one looking away to Christ, are in heart nearer to each other than they could possibly be were they to become 'unity' conscious and turn their eyes away from God to strive for closer fellowship."

Rambling Rantings And Ravings On A Friday Night From A Guy Who's Processed Way Too Many New Loans

2006-07-29T00:03:00.000-07:00

... and I mean WAY too many new loans.

Work did have its upsides today, however. I took a cue from Kati3 and began to notice some of the more interesting names and places on the documents. Three in particular stood out:
1) An address: "8 Memory Lane" (perhaps we should take a trip down there)
2) A name: "Michael Jordan" (he lives in Tujunga, California, apparently)
and 3) A phrase: "Mary Beard, an unmarried man." (um... there's just way too much there to comment)

And on the other upside of work, I broke my own record for speed today. The department standard, which we new hires are supposed to reach by September 1st, is to process 85 docs an hour, and be in production for 6.5 hours each day. That comes out to about 550 docs a day (552.5, to be exact). Being rather precocious, I passed 85 docs an hour maybe 2 weeks ago, and now I'm not satisfied with myself unless I'm consistently at 100 or higher. But today I got a very large batch of docs that were all the same format, and I hit 122 docs an hour. That's just slightly less than 30 seconds on each document. And, at the end of the day, I had processed a grand total of 650 docs--100 over standard--in only 5.78 hours.

I must confess I'm slightly proud of myself.

But now since I'm sure you've all just been holding your collective breath desperately waiting for the great "3" story, I'll present it here in all of its glory.

During the class part of our training, we had three guys who were "Senior Data Processors," also known as SMEs (Subject Matter Experts), who helped us and answered our questions. The first two were named James and Anh (pronounced "ah-n"). Then a third guy joined us, maybe halfway through the second week, whose name was Thanh (pronounced like "Anh" with a "t" in the front). I picked up the names quickly, but it took Katie a little longer. One night she asked me, "What's that guy's name again?" I answered that it was Thanh, like Anh but with a "th." I added as a joke that Anh's name was really spelled the same, Thanh, but the "th" in front of his name was silent. Katie laughed, and after a short pause said, "Well, there's a silent 3 in my name, so I guess it makes sense." That had me in stitches for several minutes, until one of the SMEs (probably Thanh himself) came over to check Katie's work and I had to control myself. When we exchanged phone numbers several days later, I entered her into my phone as Kati3, telling her that I had discovered where the silent 3 was ("That's very leet of you," she replied). And she has been Kati3 ever since.

I Am SOOO Wired

2006-07-27T01:52:00.000-07:00

Taking a cue and inspiration from Stephen and my roommate M-bito, I finally decide to check into this whole RSS reader business. There's something that I like about clicking through all the links on my blog, seeing who might have updated recently, but another part of me thinks that this will be much more efficient. Plus I feel really cool and more technologically savvy than I really am to have such a great innovation at my fingertips.

Apparently Safari (the Mac internet browser I use) has its own RSS reader, but it required putting all the links I wanted into the "Bookmarks" menu, which idea I didn't like the sound of. Thus, again through the inspiration of M-bito, who is a great champion and user of every product Google has ever invented, I opted to go with Google Reader. And, as with the other Google products I've used (i.e. Gmail), I loved it. Their user interfaces are just so, well, user-friendly that we struck up a friendship at once.

The whole idea of the RSS reader is very cool to me, being organized and not liking random clutter lying around: this way I can put any and every blog I'm interested in on there, and I won't have to worry about keeping it on my blog or in my bookmarks, but it will just sit there nicely tucked out of site (heh heh) until it has something new on it, at which time I will be promptly notified by Google Reader. I love that.

And, also at M-bito's behest, you may notice that I've added a whole bunch of RSS feeds to the bottom of my sidebar (so that people can link to my feed). I'm not sure how I feel about that, especially after just going through that whole spiel about clutter; so I may take them down soon. Plus Blogger has a very simple feed which I'm sure most people who use RSS would know/be able to figure out. So they'll probably vanish in the near future. Enjoy them while you can.

As for the title of this post: At an earlier point in the night, I was transferring all my links into Google Reader, and to that end I had 3 Safari windows open, while I was simultaneously chatting online with Kati3, text messaging Mark, and listening to my iPod. I should have taken a picture with my digital camera and printed the picture directly from my printer using a SanDisk memory card while downloading Google Web Accelerator and typing this blog post on Microsoft Word. THEN I'd be really cool.

Late Nights Always Make Me Think Too Much

2006-07-21T01:43:00.000-07:00

I just had a very strange conversation with a very good friend of mine. This person wanted to share something that was on their mind concerning me. Although I begrudgingly appreciated that they said what they felt they had to say, it left me confused, slightly hurt and wondering if there really was anything to what this person was feeling. It was also very frustrating because it was late at night and I had no one to vent to. So I wandered around thinking "What the crap?" to myself over and over again. I happened to look at my Latin calendar quote for today, and it was this:

"Quae nocent docent" - which means, "That which hurts, teaches."

And I also happened to look at a Derek Webb poster, which said this:

"foolishness = understanding"

Either God's trying to tell me something, or we should celebrate today as Random Freakish Coincidences Day.

Alright, alright, I'll post again

2006-07-19T23:42:00.000-07:00

(This is my 50th post! Let's have a celebration! Like we did at work today, getting special packets to celebrate Information Security Awareness Day... no, I'm not kidding about that....)

So, I was a little disappointed that I didn't get more feedback on my story; but I got some of the feedback in person and in emails, so I guess I can't complain. Too much. If you haven't read it, or if you've read it and not commented, do so, immediately.

So, now to the real purpose of this post.... As you may or may not have noticed, I've rearranged all the links to the right. My reason for this was threefold: 1) it's always good to mix things up a bit; 2) the Train Station, alas, is no more; and 3) some of these blogs are never, ever updated (Doug's last post on his Xanga was September 24, 2005). So I've rearranged them, approximately in the order of frequency of updates. And interest. Plus I've added a link to my music page and a few other random things.

And speaking of blogs, my list of the top 3 people who should start writing blogs:
1. Mike Morabito
2. Katie Lundell
3. The Pope (oh wait... click here)

*Update* No doubt convinced by this list here, Katie has started a blog. Check it out: The Steps of the Palace

Imitation Is The Sincerest Form Of Flattery; Or, A Short Story For You To Read

2006-07-11T23:50:00.000-07:00

And speaking of Flannery O'Connor, here is my humble imitation. I got a picture of a scene in my head on Monday night, and thought, "Wow, that would make a great short story." So I sat down at my computer and hammered out a story between 1:30 and 3 am. And so here it is, presented for your reading pleasure (if that's your reaction). I must warn you, however, that it is in the style of Flannery O'Connor, so be prepared. Also make sure you read it at least twice: the first time just to get the story, then, in light of the full story and especially the ending, read it again to pick up things you may have missed or which didn't make sense before. I want to get lots of feedback, so be kind and obliging and provide it. Thanks!

≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈

Breaking A Fall

“YOU CAN’T STOP ME!!” she screamed. “I’ll do it! I’ll—” Her voice cracked. As she looked down at the growing crowd, gathering like a mob to an execution, her eyes widened with terror, but her face remained resolute. She pressed herself more stiffly to the wall next to the fifth floor window out of which she had climbed. Her left hand, as if absent-mindedly, reached up to find something to grab onto but found nothing, and was left pawing aimlessly at the wall.

The office building’s front door flew open and hit the wall with a bang that Mary thought might shatter its seemingly delicate glass. Out of the door rushed Thomas, late to the scene, as he worked in a small cubicle toward the back of the ground floor. He worked next to the girl who was now high above them. They had gone through training together and struck up a friendship quickly. Everyone in the department knew they were good friends. Both were young and ambitious but shy, and preferred each other’s company to the general sociability of a crowd at office Christmas parties and like events. Mary was not as close to them as they were to each other, but had come from the same training class and often talked with them during their lunch breaks. She felt sorry for them; their excellence in their work and their friendship made them the target of cruel barbs from jealous peers, often in the form of insinuations about the nature of their relationship, which were always vehemently denounced.

Thomas stopped abruptly underneath the girl, about ten feet from the wall. His eyes looked shallow and pale and brimmed with unshed tears as they fixed their gaze upward. “No!” he shouted. “What are you doing? Why—”

“I’ll jump! Don’t think I won’t! You can’t stop me, Thomas!” the girl cried. Mary thought she detected a slight glistening in the girl’s eyes as well, but at that distance it was difficult to be sure. “This is my choice and you can’t stop me! None of you can stop me!” She began a sweeping gesture with her arm to include all of the onlookers, but it unsteadied her and she pulled it back quickly, crouching down a little. “I’ll do it! I will!”

“No!” Thomas’ voice cracked and hit a high note midword. “Don’t do it! What–”

She interrupted him sarcastically. “So this is the point where you tell me what all I have to live for, right? How many people care about me, and how much you love me?” There was a slight murmuring snicker from the crowd, but she seemed not to hear. “I don’t give a damn about anything, about any of you, you can all go to hell for all I care!”

The tears now flowed freely down his face, though his expression remained constant. “Why would you do this?”

Her face even at that distance now radiated scorn. “And I guess you’ll bring religion into this now too? Tell me I should get right with God, or Jesus or something?”

He looked almost angry for a moment. “I’ve never believed in God, and neither have you!”

“Well, now’s a hell of a time to start,” snickered someone at Mary’s elbow. She took her eyes from the scene long enough to give him a withering stare, and contemplated accenting it with a slap, but was rearrested by the collective gasp of the crowd as the girl took a step forward on the ledge.

“You’re damn right I’ve never believed in God!” she yelled defiantly. “I still don’t believe that there is a God! But I’m about to find out!” Suddenly, as if it had simply appeared out of the cloudless sky, a white bird flew by and passed directly in front of her. She became disoriented and tilted dangerously out of balance. As the bird alighted on a windowsill and turned innocently to watch what it had done, the girl placed an unsteady foot on air, and clawing madly and screaming she fell.

The crowd seemed to suck all the air from the scene, and their eyes widened as they watched transfixedly. But Mary, for some reason she could never explain afterward, was watching Thomas. She saw his eyes, which had been blurred with tears, suddenly focus intently on the girl. Simultaneously she felt that their expression deepened, somehow, and narrowed as his pupils contracted. He paused for a moment, with a calculating gaze, then sprang forward quickly though his face seemed calm. He stopped with his arms outstretched as the girl crashed into him and they crumpled to the ground.

The crowd closed around them immediately but Mary pushed and shoved her way through. When she reached them she had to cover her mouth to keep from retching, but she could not turn away. Thomas’ body was twisted and broken, and blood oozed from his side where a crushed rib had punctured the skin. His legs were crossed unnaturally beneath him. His shoulders and arms protruded at odd angles from his torso; but they were both wrapped around the girl. She lay on top of him, looking like a child asleep in her father’s arms. Her forehead was sprinkled with blood, but as Mary could see no wounds on her she assumed the blood must have been Thomas’. Her eyes were closed, and she looked more contented than Mary had ever seen her.

Mary slowly became aware of the noise of the crowd around her. Everyone was murmuring in hushed tones as if they were standing in a sacred place. “Stupid kid,” muttered the man whom Mary had heard earlier. “Had to go and get himself killed too.” She turned, and as she did so she saw the bird that had flown in the girl’s face leave its perch and fly away. Someone else said, “He never did tell her how much she had worth living for.”

“That wasn’t what she needed,” said Mary as she walked away.

For All You Flannery O'Connor Fans Out There...

2006-07-07T01:15:00.000-07:00

... which, upon reflection, may constitute the vast majority of people who read my blog. Dad, Clay, Eleanor... Rachel? Do you like Flannery O'Connor? Oh wait, I forgot, she doesn't read my blog... dangit!

(A sentence using the 10 story titles from her collection, A Good Man Is Hard To Find And Other Stories)

"Even though A GOOD MAN IS HARD TO FIND, if by A STROKE OF GOOD FORTUNE you discover A CIRCLE IN THE FIRE or have A LATE ENCOUNTER WITH THE ENEMY, then THE LIFE YOU SAVE MAY BE YOUR OWN, and GOOD COUNTRY PEOPLE like THE ARTIFICIAL NIGGER and THE DISPLACED PERSON may lead you to A TEMPLE OF THE HOLY GHOST by THE RIVER."

Wisdom From Magnetic Poetry™ On Our Fridge

2006-06-25T22:01:00.000-07:00

It speaks the truth!!!

Crazy Political Activists

2006-06-24T13:41:00.000-07:00

I just got a call from the California Republican Party, asking me to donate money to the cause to make sure that a Democrat is not elected to be our state's next governor. This guy was all crazy and out of breath the whole time, and I stayed on the line for a while just because it was so funny. The thing that really tipped me off was when he mentioned something about a "left-wing liberal nightmare," Phil Angelides (the Democratic candidate)--but he pronounced it "phil an-guh-lides." I said, "Wait, wait, hold on a second--you mean Phil an-juh-lee-dess, right?" He paused a moment, then said, "Yes, you're absolutely right sir, I pronounced that wrong, I've been campaigning all day long, sir, to keep the liberals from...."

I pretty much stopped listening after that.

A Poem from Keynote

2006-06-21T20:08:00.000-07:00

This is another poem (the second of two) that I wrote during my quiet times during the Keynote Summer Project of 2004. (You can read the first one, which I posted back in October of last year, here.) It's based on Hosea 7:11-16, but specifically the image of the net in verse 12. I've often been encouraged in my walk rereading this poem after falling into sin, and I hope that it might be encouraging to y'all as well.

≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈

In this race I run
I hit a snag, I stumbled,
I fell.
I chased in to the forest,
An apparition of beauty before me, but
'Twas only dust.

He cast His net upon me,
I fell.
I cursed the ground, the net, the trees
I railed again the sky.

He pulled, He drew
I turned, I saw
True
Beauty.
I rose.
I followed.
I ran again.

A New Apartment By Any Other Name

2006-06-21T02:23:00.000-07:00

Hey folks!

Sorry if I've been a little remiss on updating lately. The reason is because I've been moving, and I'm now (almost) settled into my new apartment with good ol' M-bito from school. He's an awesome guy, and I'm really enjoying living with him so far, even though I only see him at night since he works full-time. (And lest you think I'm just trying to get on his good side, I don't even think he reads this blog, so my compliments to him are entirely unsolicited.)

I'm lovin' it so far. The thing is, I decided that we need to come up with a name for our apartment, a la the Train Station or Graceland (the name of Don Miller's community). Since our apartment complex is named Rose Pointe, I thought perhaps something with the word "rose" in it could be cool. It doesn't need to have deep, meaningful or spiritual significance, necessarily, it just needs to sound cool. Any ideas?

P.S. I just hooked up our new wireless router, so now we have wireless internet in our apartment (yay!). I named our network "Rose CounterPointe." Get it, "point counterpoint," "Rose Pointe," ... haha?

Movies Seldom Leave Me Speechless...

2006-06-05T01:35:00.000-07:00

... but this one did (at least for a moment; then I wrote a blog post about it). I just watched M. Night Shyamalan's Unbreakable for the first time. Allow me a slight moment of indulgence.

The premise of the movie was intriguing. The plot, seamless. The character development, engaging. The acting, phenomenal. The cinematography, breathtaking. The attention to detail, absolutely impeccable.

The music by James Newton Howard (who has done all of Shyamalan's films), while not memorable in a melodic sense, was nevertheless extremely effective in both matching and helping to set the tone of the film throughout. Plus the main motif was in the Mixolydian mode, which I always enjoy.

Note to self: New career goal. Make music as well as M. Night Shyamalan makes movies.

An Equation for Finals Week

2006-05-24T17:09:00.000-07:00

30 minute parking + 0 enforcement = AJ gets to drive to school every day of finals week

Yeah, so... Monday I was in a 30 minute spot for 45 minutes, then later in the day a 30 minute spot for more than an hour. Last night I was in a 30 minute spot for 3 hours, and today a 30 minute spot for 2 hours. So I've spent almost 5 hours parked illegitimately. And no tickets. None at all.

And by the way, in response to my brother's wry comment on my last post: YES, it was a ROCK-AWESOME paper. Not the best I've ever written, but definitely a good one. I learned a lot in the writing of it, and it's very well put-together in a logical and clear manner.

So there. :p

P.S. Just ran across this awesome quote from Mark Twain: "...people think it is the noise which fighting cats make that is so aggravating, but it ain't so; it is the sickening grammar that they use."

Heck Freakin' YEAH.

2006-05-21T01:15:00.000-07:00

So I just finished writing a 13-page research paper using more than 20 sources in less than 10 hours.

I compiled my bibliography yesterday, then this morning I went to the CSUF and CSULB libraries to get all my print sources. I got back around 2 pm and started writing, took a break for an hour and a half to eat dinner with Stephen and Jessica (and watch a Star Trek: The Next Generation episode), then went back to writing and finished at 1 am.

I'm so happy that it's done. The writing process actually went slower than I expected; I was juggling so many sources that I spent a lot of time just flipping back and forth between them. But I finished it in less than 10 hours.

Oh yeah.