Stumbling Toward God?

It dawned on me earlier this week that it has been so long since I “got over” feeling the need to be a productive member of society that I can not remember when or how it happened.

I do sort of have a job, but it is not consistent work and it does not pay well. Although having some kind of income is obviously a plus, I think one of the main reason I do it is just so that when people ask me what I do, I can have an answer. (Although I do sometimes claim that I am “unemployed” depending on my mood.) Unfortunately, sometimes other people at that job ask what I *really* do for money, and that is always awkward.

It so happens that one of the full time employees there just up and quit recently because his mother has been having a lot of health problems. It also happened to be on one of the days that I was working. Not that it matters, but I was actually the one that discovered the envelop containing his keys and resignation letter that had been unceremoniously dropped through the mail slot in the door. Later that day there was a casual discussion of the various pros and cons of his departure and the topic of his mother dying was brought up, on which point I crudely offered, “That’ll mess a dude UP.” I then added that it happened to me six years ago and I never recovered.

Six years ago I was going to school, I was going to church, I had a social network and romantic relationships (or at least, an interest in romantic relationships)… now, not so much. It might not be a direct cause and effect. After all, your mother dying is something that happens to absolutely everybody (unless you happen to die first and then THAT is the real tragedy). Most people find a way to get on with life. I can not say that I planned this, but I have managed to construct a lifestyle in which I never *have* to do anything that I do not want to. I mean, of course I still have bills to pay and errands to run and that kind of thing, but on any given day, if I do not feel like doing anything productive, it does not really matter. And I have a lot of days like that.

It bothers me sometimes how irresponsible I have become, and especially how much more responsible I was at twenty than at thirty (and counting.) I am pretty good with individual events. If I say I will be someplace, then I will be there. (I probably will not be *on time*, but, you know.) Individual tasks… I will probably get to it… eventually… it depends on who it is for, and if it is just something for my own benefit, probably not going to happen. For tasks that have to be repeated at regular intervals, I am pretty much useless.

Lately, I am starting to feel like the debt has come due on my carefree lifestyle as it seems that everything is falling apart around me.

A pipe sprung a leak under my bathroom back in February and I went five weeks without hot water in the house, because I was just too lazy to fix it. It was another month or two before I finished the plumbing and completely restored water to every faucet and fixture in the house. The sprinkler system is STILL non-operational. That one bathroom still has no tub, no toilet and a big hole in the floor. Lest I sound like I am trying to solicit charity, I want to be clear that it is not a money problem. It is a I-want-to-do-the-work-myself-except-that-I-don’t-really problem. There are some other maintenance issues around the house as well, but they are hardly worth mentioning.

Yesterday I blew a tire on my truck. That happens. However, I knew it was going to happen, because I noticed an unusual bulge in that particular tire over a year ago, but I just never bothered to do anything about it. Oddly, that is the second time in the last month that I was in a vehicle when a tire blew out. The first time, a friend was driving and he lost control of the car and we did a 270 degree turn off of the freeway. I blew out my tire on a mountain road, but I did not spin, and I did not leave the road. That makes for the second – third come to think of it – time that I probably should have died on a mountain road and yet did not. That seems strange.

Long before I had any interest in Christianity, I became skeptical of evolution, as the whole idea seemed rather far fetched. I never looked into it though, and as the topic is still fairly taboo among Christians, it was easy to put the question aside when I entered the church some years later. The question of whether or not evolution is (for lack of a better term) “real” is simply not important to my daily life, and my faith or lack there of does not hinge on that particular issue. (Though from the passion I notice in others, I have to assume that my attitude toward this topic is atypical.) That said, I only offer this post as philosophical speculation, not well grounded in anything at all.

I happened upon a video online a few weeks ago on “ring species.” One definition of “species” is a classification of organisms that can successfully interbreed. Horses and donkeys are separate species, for example, because while they can in fact mate, the resulting mule is almost always infertile. Also, ligers and tiglons which I found out just now* are actually NOT infertile, so bad example. [*Via the internet. I was not personally attempting to breed them immediately prior to writing this post.] Still, ligers and tiglons, everybody!

A “ring species” is, to my understanding, when a “species” becomes geographically separated into a number of distinct populations. Population A can successfully interbreed with population B; population B with population C; C with D; and D with E; however, population A is NOT able to interbreed with population E. The question then arises, are populations A and E the same species? The video that I saw was actually presented as a challenge to creationists. Many creationists accept “micro-evolution” within a single species (i.e. breeds), but “macro-evolution” (one species evolving from another) is right out.

If any creationists out there would like to address this then be my guest, but as I said before, it is not my concern. I do not give a crap about birds or salamanders or even dogs. Yet I idly wonder: does this happen with people? Can, say, an Australian Aborigine and a Scandinavian produce viable offspring? Probably… but when you get right down to it, I am not really sure.

Switching gears slightly, the movie Idiocracy postulates that natural selection favors stupid, irresponsible people and that in the future, there will be no intelligent people left. While I did not care for the movie itself, I always felt that the underlying premise was extremely plausible. However, at some point in the recent political-economic climate, I began to wonder if this was inaccurate. What if natural selection does not, strictly speaking, favor the unintelligent, but rather the underprivileged? Furthermore, what if the opposite group (the “haves” as opposed to the “have-nots”, if you will) did not actually become extinct, merely a smaller and more isolated population? That would result in a situation much more like the one presented in The Time Machine by H. G. Wells. It has been a great many years since I read that book, but the gist is that the time traveler discovers in the very distant future that humans have evolved (or devolved) into two separate species: the Eloi, who live a carefree lifestyle on the surface of the earth, and the aggressive Morlocks, who live underground, tending to and feeding off of the Eloi. It should also be noted that both the Eloi and the Morlocks are significantly less intelligent than modern humans. No one is disputing that.

I went to a guitar show last weekend. I had been looking forward to it for some time. I have been wanting to start collecting/investing in guitars for quite awhile now, yet I have been reluctant to pull the trigger on buying anything.

Part of the issue is that collecting and investing are not really the same thing.
Collecting means buying guitars that I personally would want to have, and probably (though not necessarily) would not want to sell. Investing in guitars is just like investing in anything else: buy low, sell high.

It is the “investing” part that is tripping me up. Last year, I bought a big book full of guitar prices. The value of guitars is a lot like cars: a 10 year old one is not worth very much; a 20 year old is worth practically nothing; but somewhere around 30 years old, it changes from “used” to “vintage” and the price starts to go up again; and at 50 years, it is worth quite a lot.

Key then is to buy something that is on the downward part of the curve and then wait ten or twenty years for the price to go up. However, every time I find something that looks good, either online or in person, the seller wants way more than my book says it is worth. Who are they kidding? Is anyone really buying vintage guitars in this economy? I would think it would be a buyer’s market.

I had been to this same guitar show last summer and been slightly disappointed. Sure there were a lot of nice guitars, especially a lot of high end and vintage guitars that you do not generally find in the average guitar shop. Yet, while they did have a number of guitar models that I was familiar with but had never actually seen in person, there was not really anything new and unusual to me like I had been hoping for.

This year, the event was at a venue much closer to where I live and I went fully planning to walk away with something. I do not know if it was the change in venue or the economy or what, but there were not nearly as many booths this year. Still, even on a casual first walk through I noticed several promising guitars. A few more when I really started looking carefully at each vender. Most were again in the way more than I would want to spend range, but not all. I could go into details, but I doubt it would mean much to most readers.

There was one interesting guitar that I kept coming back to in my mind. Great guitar? No. Nice looking guitar? It was actually in pretty bad shape cosmetically. Worth what the asking price? Debatable. But an interesting guitar. A guitar that wants to be played, not kept in a case in the closet. A guitar with character.

However, for a number of reasons (or should I say, “excuses”) that do not seem that important now, I ended up not buying it, and walked out empty handed and more than a little annoyed with myself. I did not even take note of the dealer’s name, which might have left open the possibility of buying it online.

This is not so much about buying a guitar or not buying a guitar. I already have a lot of guitars. I also in general struggle with buyer’s remorse and just plain “clutter” way more often than I have regret over NOT buying something. This is really about having an idea and not following through. It is about not being able to make a decision in the moment. I keep thinking about that guitar that I am never going to have and it reminds me of so many other opportunities that I have missed because of my overall lack of CERTITUDE.

To add extra an extra layer of futility: after spending hours walking around and dreaming of possibilities, did I play any guitar when I got home? I did not.

I occasionally hear the accusation that conservatives and/or Republicans (if one wants to make the distinction) want to see President Obama fail because “He’s Black,” and that Republicans, especially “the Tea Party”, are nothing but racists.

Now, while I am sure that many conservatives do happen to be racist (the “birther movement” comes to mind), but that is hardly a defining characteristic of the whole. Here is what I think happened: Obama’s election was an enormous symbolic victory. Many people probably voted for him specifically because he is Black; I would not be surprised if many people voted for the first and only time in their lives simply because he is Black. Even people who supported his policies, or those would have automatically voted for the Democratic candidate regardless, no doubt felt a little extra proud about their choice. Like Jackie Robinson, who was not necessarily the greatest baseball player even in his own time, the fact that Obama was the first Black president will most likely be historically more significant than anything else he does as president. I also think that many people were fully expecting the same sort of backlash against Obama that Jackie Robinson faced.

Therefore, if one believes either openly or subconsciously that the most important thing about Obama is that he is Black, then obviously an attack of any kind must be for that reason. Yet I think you have to objectively ask: exactly who is the racist in that scenario?

The last Democratic president prior to Obama was Clinton, whom the Republicans tried to run out of office. Yet Clinton was (that particular issue aside) in many areas more conservative than Obama. The Democrat before that was Carter, whom I have frequently heard refered to by conservatives as “The Useless One” or something similar. However, both Carter and Clinton were white, Southern Baptists, so the objection to them was obviously not fueled by racism. It turns out that Republicans just really dislike liberals.

In fact, returning to the “birther” idea, while that particular accusation would never have worked against a white president, I suspect that at least some people supported it simply as any excuse to get rid of a liberal president. I believe that most intelligent, respected conservatives tried to distance themselves from the idea as an embarrassing distraction from the real issues. One might even argue that the liberally biased media gave the issue more attention than it deserved for exactly the same reason.

Republicans do not want to see Obama fail. Even conservatives who may or may not have respect for the man or his policies can still be proud at least that the racial barrier to the presidency has been broken. I have never heard this point argued before, but to me it seems that the fact that right now, in America as it is today, a Black man born in obscurity is capable of rising to the highest office in the land is actually more in line with conservative ideology than liberal. (Though I admit that it is entirely possible that I am missing part of the story there.)

Republicans want Obama to succeed. The catch is that they will judge Obama’s success or failure based upon how well he conforms to conservative policies and principles. Under such criteria, he is most certain to fail.

A year or so ago I was at one of those “pieces of flair” restaurant/bar places with a small group of people. At some point, the other members of the party had wandered away from the table for whatever reason, leaving me alone with a guy that I hardly knew. He proceeded to solicit my opinion on every woman in that establishment, which is not a game with which I am particularly comfortable.

Quickly tiring of my noncommittal answers, he began a more direct line of questioning to determine my “type”. At some point in this line of inquiry, he asked my opinion of Black girls, and being annoyed at every aspect of the conversation thus far, I exasperatedly replied, “I’ve never met a Black girl that I wanted to date.”

Now that is the kind of statement that you really wish you had not said the very instant it leaves your mouth. My companion was momentarily shocked, but undeterred, he began to name some African American celebrities and do I not find them attractive? Sure, whatever.

As if it was not obvious enough before, we were at this point clearly not on the same page. For I specifically said “date”, while he was (at least for the purpose of this exercise) not remotely interested in dating.

Regardless, that statement of mine has been troubling me ever since. The most obvious defense is that it was merely a statement of fact, in the same sense that “I have never been to Brazil” is a statement of fact. Or perhaps a better analogy in this case would be, “I have never wanted to go to Brazil.” What do I have against Brazil? Absolutely nothing. It is not that I refuse to go to Brazil. It is simply that, although technically I could get on a plane at any time, at no point in my life thus far has “Go to Brazil” seemed like the thing to do at that moment. If the opportunity should arise that I had a compelling reason to go, then I probably would. But as it stands, there are a lot of places to which I have never been, and that is merely one of them.

I am not opposed to the idea of dating a Black woman. I have met some wonderful ones that I have gotten along well with over the years, it just so happens that I have thus far not have felt that sort of chemistry with any of them. I almost feel like I should now go out and date a Black woman just to prove that I am not racist, although realistically, I fail to see how that is in anyone’s best interest. If we are really going for brutally honest T.M.I. here, I actually have a preference for Asians, yet I have never dated one of them either. The truth is, it has been years since I have met anyone at all that I have wanted to date, although that is a rather separate issue.

Maybe I would have let this whole thing pass, but some time later, a coworker was telling me about a time that he went to a strip club, and that a Black stripper was wanting to give him a lap-dance, but he had never been attracted to Black girls. This conversation also was rather outside my comfort zone, yet I felt a certain guilty relief in being able to agree with him on this point.

More recently still, I found two videos online (independent of each other, and I do not recall now how I came across either one.) The first is from a comedy series. The second is heartbreaking. So I see that this is much more than one poorly phrased, frustrated comment. This is a deep cultural problem.

Last night I think that I dreamt that someone was in my house with malicious intent. I woke from that dream into another dream. “Home” in my dreams is almost always the house in which I grew up. (It is so uncommon that I dream of the current house, in which I have lived (off and on) for eight or nine years now, that when it does happen I always wake up surprised. This was not one of those times.) The house was built sometime in the 1890s… and I have always been a little confused when people mention “old houses” when referring to houses built only thirty years ago. Californians.

Anyway, I awoke in my old house, in my childhood room, though I was now the only one who lived there. And from the dream I was filled with dread and convinced that I was not alone in the house. From my gabled bedroom, I could step out of my window onto another part of the roof, and I proceeded to do so. Growing up, the lot next door was an orange grove until sometime in high school when they cut down the trees and relocated another old (Victorian old, I mean) house there from another part of town. However, in my dream, I saw that for some reason that house was now gone again, leaving only a dirt lot next door. I made my way to the back of the house, where the previous owner had inexpertly enclosed a porch into a flat-roofed room that did not match the style of the rest of the house. On this flat portion of roof, I discovered five teenagers just sitting around and drinking. Not sure how to handle the situation, I looked straight at one Macaulay Culkin-ish looking guy whom I took to be their leader and yelled, “Get out of here!” in my best threatening voice. It worked, and the kids scattered. I began to check the rest of the house for further intrusions.

The architecture and history that I have mentioned up until this point was surprisingly accurate, and not the product of dream logic, with two exceptions: the relocated orange-grove house is still very much present (as far as I know), and the major remodel that my parents did to the back end of the house shortly before leaving the country was apparently non-canon in my dream.

At this point I think that I awoke briefly and returned to sleep. I was still in my house, and still looking for intruders, only now my house was a five-story mansion, yet I still lived in it alone. From somewhere in the house, I heard a female voice ask her companion, “Did you hear someone?” Apparently a couple of teenagers has sneaked into my mansion for an illicit rendezvous.

In the center of the house was a grand sweeping stairway that spiraled up all five stories with a wide opening in the middle. Not having the patience for five flights of stairs, and being a former circus performer, I opted instead to climb up an ornately carved wooden pole that formed one of the supports for the staircase. At this point, there were two girls with me. I do not know why, or even who, as they had not been present prior to now, and not wishing to climb in the manner that I had chosen, they were not around subsequently. I only mention them for completeness in case someone is doing in depth dream analysis on me.

At the very top of the house was a doorway that opened into a very small room – walk in closet sized actually –  with another door slightly ajar on the opposite wall. I knew that this was wrong… it felt like the set up to a horror movie. Rather than entering the room, I gripped the door frame on either side of me and kicked the opposite door open. I do not pretend to understand the physics here, but it was not a door at all, it was a mirror reflecting a door that I could not see. It was a trap. When I kicked it, it began to turn until it revealed a wooden cabinet with seven doors. I knew that the door behind me was supposed to have closed and locked me in, yet my hands on the door frame had prevented it. I also knew that whatever was behind those seven doors was NOT going to be pleasant. But I was having none of that, and I promptly woke myself up.

That was strange in itself, because I do not normally have the ability to consciously pull myself out of a dream like that. Now I was in my real house, in real life, in the dark. But was I alone? I recalled that there is a series of video games and/or movies called Alone in the Dark. Yet I could not help thinking that there is nothing scary about being alone in the dark… it is NOT being alone when you thought that you were, or that you ought to be, that is truly terrifying.

So was there someone in the house? Was my subconscious trying to tell me something? For is that not what dreams are, just your subconscious bringing up things that your conscious mind overlooked? That is what I get for sleeping with the windows open. Anyone could wander in, and it seems unlikely that it would be harmless teens merely looking for some fun.

There was no one else in the house. Unless maybe… I am still dreaming even now.

I usually feel guilty every time that I write a post about music, because I imagine that it is not why folks come here. “Ugh. Another post about guitars? I’m not reading that.” Yet today I am of the mood that they should be happy that I am posting anything at all, jerks! (timoth is good with the people.)

I have been having some internet difficulties again lately, which naturally means picking up the guitar a little more often. These days I have been focusing more on instrumentals, because a while ago I had an idea for a Purple Robe project that would consist of a series of short (one to two minutes) guitar instrumentals in wildly different styles to try to create different moods. Why? I do not know… is there a good reason “why” behind anything the Purple Robe has ever done? Basically just to see if I can, I guess.

To give you an idea of what I mean, I came up with one piece that I think is kind of “piratey”, and another that, though I am not really sure how to describe the style, sort of reminds me of a summer breeze. There is also a “Chinese” flavored one that has been kicking around for a couple of years, and a couple of other snippets as well. None of these are anything close to full songs of course. And just because *I* think that they sound like a particular genre that I know nothing about, does not make it so.

I am not sure why I even bother to mention this, because I think we all know that I am never actually going to finish it. In fact, with my tendency toward total secrecy when working on a project, merely bringing it up pretty much guarantees that I will not finish it. Why all this mucking about in genres of which I know nothing anyway? You know who does that? People far more talented than I, and it still results in the poopiest music of their careers.

Then I somehow got to thinking that one problem with my body of songs is that none of them have a really “killer riff”. I do not like to think of my self as merely a “chord strummer”, in the sense that you often see someone in at a coffee house, open mic or church simply strumming basic open chords as accompaniment for the vocal. (Although some of my songs actually are exactly that.) Still, for whatever reason, I do not really like to move my fretting hand a lot when playing guitar, so my style does boil down to mostly picking or strumming chords, even if it is not the most common or obvious form for a given chord.

Technically speaking, a “riff” is any repeated musical passage, so even a simple chord progression qualifies. But what we are talking about here are KILLER riffs. I am thinking of “Rebel Rebel”, “Sweet Child O’ Mine”, “Iron Man”, “Oh Pretty Woman”, “Boys Don’t Cry”… I could go on and on, but hopefully for at least one of those songs, the mere mention of it created a distinct musical passage in your mind. A killer riff gives a song identity*.

A killer riff should be short, often only one or two bars, although it can be longer as even some of my examples above are. It should contain notes of a scale and not just a chord. (Until very recently I thought that a scale and a key were basically the same thing, and even now knowing that they are not, I am still a little fuzzy on the distinction and the purpose of each, but even so.) A riff is different from a melody, although they can be melodic. It should be a “hook” rather than repeating through most of the song, which I think makes it more of a “rhythm” than a “riff”, though that is a somewhat ambiguous and possibly artificial distinction.

So what to do I have? “Wasting” has a neat little guitar thing, although it is really just two alternating chords with a little flourish in the middle. “Art of Letting Go” has a riff that I feel gives the song identity, but it does not have notes that you could hum or scat sing or whatever like the above examples. “SoPoard” has a nice repeating phrase, although it is quite long and slow. I think my riffiest of riffs is from a song called “The Wait” which no one has ever heard. [I should totally finish that one, you would like it I think. Well, maybe not if you have not liked any of the other ones. Nevermind.] Yet even that one underlies most of the song, which was against one of my conditions.

So, it is as I said: no killer riffs.

*The leader of a band that I used to be in was always talking about giving songs “identity”, by which he usually meant taking a perfectly good groove and changing it around so that it messed with people’s expectations (including the rest of the band) and quite frankly, now sucked. That is not what I mean here.

These annual reflections seem like quite a farce at this point, but it seems that I have somehow managed to retain a couple of regular readers. Also, my previous post reminded me of something that I was thinking about a long time ago but I never got around to posting. So let’s do this.

Someone once told me rather bluntly to simply “get over whatever it is that you’re mad at God about.” This was probably a couple of years ago now, yet it has stuck with me, not as a useful piece of advice, but rather as an indication of a total lack of understanding of my situation.

Mad at God? I remembered in that moment that I had already once admitted to being mad at God, and one thing I have learned about dealing with conservatives is that it is important to not take back anything that you have said lest you be labeled a “flip-flopper” and they will never respect you.* So there was no denying that I was mad at God.

The question then becomes: what does it mean for me to be mad at God? For someone who has a “relationship” with God, I can see how it would be quite simple. It would be like if you had two friends that had a fight and and now they are not speaking to each other. One of them needs to make the effort to apologize and take it from there. (Obviously if we accept such a scenario, then God being infallible and all, the fault is entirely mine.) But what if I am not mad at someone that you know? What if I told you instead that I was mad at my grandfather? (My mother’s father, and I am not, by the way.) However, if I were… he is dead now and whatever the issue, no reconciliation is possible. Or indeed, what if I had some reason to be mad at my father’s father? Well, he died long before I was born. He is not even a “real person” in my head, more of vague person-shaped idea.

What if I were mad at a legendary figure? Someone who either never existed at all, or is so surrounded in mythology as to be essentially fictional? Santa Claus. King Arthur. Odysseus. What would it even mean to be mad at one of these?

So then, what if God were not real? What if all that I have attributed to Him over for the last eight years was but a mishmash of hopeful naïveté and confirmation bias? To be mad at this is to be mad at an abstract concept. One might as well claim to be mad at “love”, or mad at “peace”.

This is where I stand.

*I am fully aware that this is a downright insulting over-simplification, but I could write a whole separate post on what I actually mean by this. I do not feel like doing that now, so maybe you could just pretend to understand what I am getting at here and we can move it along.

In my last post, I was trying to make some point about coincidences that, to be honest, I do not even understand myself. I thought I could throw some anecdotes together and allow the reader to draw their own conclusions. However, I was not very respectful to the young lady mentioned.

I have been struggling over this for the past couple of weeks. I did not know her well; she was just one of the kids I knew at a job that I used to have. It must be a decade or so since I last saw her. With the modern stalking marvel that is Facebook, I was able to surf through friends of friends with poor privacy settings to find some recent pictures. Had I happened to encounter her somewhere in the past few years, I doubt I would have recognized her. She merely looked to me like some random twenty something year old.

So I do not remember much about her, but the disturbing part is that I am ashamed of what I do remember. The fact is, I really did not like her. Looking back now through the fog of time, it is hard to say why. I thought she was a brat, but perhaps I was too quick to judge. She was only, I do not know, in her early teens, I guess. That is an awkward time for everyone. Maybe she grew out of it. I was quite young myself, and not mature enough to deal with conflicting personalities. Perhaps if I had met her again more recently, we would have gotten along much better. We will never know now.

There is one incident in particular that I had completely forgotten about, but now it haunts me. I am not comfortable going into details aside to say that there was a conflict. As far as I can remember now, it was a conflict that was never “resolved”, but rather never mentioned again.

It is troubling in a more general sense as well. I tend to be an out-of-sight-out-of-mind type of person.  To think now about all the people who come and go in life, and I never give them another thought until maybe ten years later I hear that they are gone forever. It is especially unsettling in cases of unresolved issues, where it was just easier to never see the person again than to address the problem. Which is pretty much my default.

There is one other thing that has been itching at my memory. That contrary to what I said above… I did see her more recently. I want to say that one time I went into a store where she happened to be working. Yet it is so blurry, like a barely remembered dream. Did I actually speak with her? Did I just see someone who resembled, and may or may not have actually been her? (Especially considering that, as I mentioned above, the young lady she became did not look like the girl I remember.)  Maybe this incident did not involve her at all, and I am confusing her now with one of the other kids that I had not seen in equally as long. I am just not sure. I want this to be real, although I hardly see why it even matters now.

I realize that this rambling nonsense probably means even less to the reader than my usual rambling nonsense, but still I want to say, thirteen years too late: I am sorry, Rachel.

For the past few years I have worked setting up the sound equipment for a local community’s summer concert series. As I was heading to work yesterday to pick up said equipment, I happened to be listening to Zooropa. For the unfamiliar, the song has a rather long ambient intro with synths and heavily effected voices and samples. Right at the moment when the full band kicks in, I noticed a pedestrian a little ways in front of me suddenly lean to one side and make a motion to hitch up her jeans slightly or something. Or in other words: shake her booty in time to music that only I could hear.

I drove on thinking about what an unusual occurrence this was, and at some point I realized that this coincidence did not effect my belief in God in any way. Because I know that we live in a complex and chaotic world with uncountable variables, and sometimes coincidences just happen.

I was talking with my dad earlier this week and mentioned that this concert series was starting up again, and then I happened to remember that it was while setting up for one of these shows a couple of summers ago that I heard the news that Michael Jackson had died. I do not know why that is important to anything at all, it was just some random detail that I remember for some reason.

So anyway, when I arrived at the shop yesterday, one of the secretaries was on the phone. Toward the end of the conversation it became apparent that she had received bad news. After hanging up she asked me if I remembered [a girl I used to know], and that she had died that morning.

WTF? Now this is just bullsh